During Stream On, we’ll share new developments to help creators continue to chart pathways to success and build a truly global audience.
When competition is fair, both consumers and companies win. Learn about our efforts to even the playing field for all developers.
Artists deserve clarity about the economics of music streaming. This site sheds light on the global streaming economy and royalty system.
Music and football come together in a way that’s entirely new in our partnership with FC Barcelona.
Photo credit: Getty images. Above: Byrell the Great
Pride Month may be coming to a close, but the energy and vibrancy of the LGBTQIA+ creator community will continue to resonate with Spotify’s global music program, GLOW at full volume year-round. Amid the parades, parties, and other Pride celebrations, we teamed up with Interview Magazine in New York City to create an unforgettable night of joy, dancing, music, and community where all guests were “Free to Be.”
Urias isn’t about to sit around and wait for success to come to her. The Brazilian artist first found fame on the catwalk as a model and from there expanded her creativity to music.
After sharing a series of covers, including a memorable version of Azealia Banks’s “Ice Princess,” Urias dropped her first original track, “Você Me Vira a Cabeça,” in 2018. Since then, she’s released multiple EPs and two albums, the second of which, HER MIND, just came out this month.
Spotify is excited to amplify the creative vision and punchy tracks of the singer as one of our GLOW artists for the month of June. Through GLOW, our global music program celebrating and amplifying LGBTQIA+ artists and creators all year round, we’re supporting Urias on our platform with a dedicated hub and flagship GLOW playlist, and off our platform via billboards like those in New York City’s Times Square and on the city’s MTA subway system.
From her queer icons to the best advice she’s received, Urias shares more with For the Record below.
My journey in music started in mid-2017. I realized that it was not a distant dream anymore, so I started working on my first cover releases! In 2019 I released my first EP [Urias], in 2022 my first album [FÚRIA], and I just released my second studio album [HER MIND].
There are a lot of powerful and important voices that deserve the spotlight all year long, all around the globe.
Sometimes my creative process starts with the visuals, and then after that we start the musical part of it.
It’s always important to celebrate who you are! There’s still a long path we need to walk, but you should always celebrate yourself.
I don’t think I can separate it! My music is my art and my way to express myself differently.
Strength.
Grace Jones, Liniker, and Honey Dijon.
Music is an important way to communicate to people—the ones that understand you and the ones that need to understand you, too!
Take chances and take care of yourself.
Being able to be myself and create art!
Catch Urias and many other LGBTQIA+ artists this month and all year round on our flagship GLOW playlist.
From punk to ballroom, EDM to drag, music and culture from LGBTQIA+ creators have helped shape and inspired our world.
At Spotify, we’re creating a platform where everyone is Free To Be, no matter who they are, where they live, or what communities they belong to.
In January when we launched GLOW, a global music program celebrating and amplifying LGBTQIA+ artists and creators, we did so to ensure that queer creators and their contributions are heard and honored year-round. That includes during Pride Month, the annual worldwide celebration that makes time to commemorate the LGBTQIA+ community’s culture and achievements, raise awareness of issues and injustices, and advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights.
This Pride Month, LGBTQIA+ listeners and allies in 26 markets can come to Spotify to discover a world where communities and freedom of expression are celebrated. Through our GLOW platform spotlight, and themed podcast playlists, we’re highlighting a place where queer stories and voices from around the world shine.
To kick off Pride, we’re turning up the volume on the talented LGBTQIA+ artists in our GLOW hub. This month, in addition to our flagship GLOW playlist, we’re making local GLOW playlists available in Thailand, Israel, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Nordics, the U.K. and Ireland, and North America.
We’ll also highlight Trixie Mattel from the U.S., Urias from Brazil, and Dana International from Israel as our GLOW spotlight artists. We’ll support them with features on the GLOW hub, a billboard in Times Square in New York City, interviews here on For the Record, and more.
Fans can also find recorded playlist stories in our GLOW flagship playlist from Victoria Monet, TAAHLIAH, Marina Summers, Zemmoa, Angie Oeh, Isak Danielson, and G Flip. Each creator spoke about the need to protect and celebrate LGBTQIA+ communities and subcultures. We asked queer U.S. band The Aces and British DJ and producer TAAHLIAH to reflect on what Pride and GLOW mean to them.
TAAHLIAH: We still have a long way to go collectively, as a consciousness. Whilst acceptance is rife amongst the few, the majority still see queerness as some kind of imposing negative force. It’s important to showcase a varied way of existing, beyond the binary, overlooking the constraints that a white-cis-hetero patriarchy has placed upon us.
The Aces: Because queer visibility saves lives, and it’s important to both celebrate it and make it accessible to those who may need to see it all year round.
The GLOW hub is also getting a glow-up with the addition of podcasts and podcast playlists so listeners can sink into the stories, experiences, and knowledge of LGBTQIA+ hosts and guests. Catch new episodes telling stories of underground LGBTQIA+ subcultures on the BBC Club, Camp Counselors, Two Dykes and a Mic, Aware and Aggravated, and the Ty French Podcast.
Here are a few must-listen-to LGBTQIA+-led podcasts for Pride Month and beyond.
We Said What We Said, featuring hosts Rickey Thompson and Denzel Dion
With bold advice, hot takes, and risqué storytelling, longtime besties Rickey and Denzel dish on everything that matters, from pop culture, sex, and struggle to love, music, and friendship. Tune in for new video podcast episodes on Tuesdays, only on Spotify.
Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness
Come on a journey with Queer Eye co-host Jonathan and guest experts as they explore anything and everything under the sun.
You’re Wrong About, “We Need to Talk About the New York Times with Tuck Woodstock”
In the episode of the show that gets you to rethink topics that have been miscast in the public eye, Gender Reveal host Tuck Woodstock takes listeners on a journey through the New York Times’ coverage of trans issues, and in the end, he points the way toward a better future.
Stories with Sapphire with host Sapphire Sandalo
Join host Sapphire Sandalo, a queer Filipino (Cebuano/Ilonggo) American occultist on a mission to add more empathy and diversity to the paranormal, supernatural, and horror communities through stories and interviews from the Philippines and around the world.
Each week, The Laverne Cox Show features intimate conversations with a wide range of guests. These perspectives aim to inspire new behaviors in each of us, which in turn get us closer to becoming the very best versions of ourselves.
Girlish with Gage Adkins and Olivia Noel
As trans women of color in their 20s, Gage and Olivia strive to create a podcast that speaks volumes by discussing issues like transphobia, coming out in college, body dysphoria, and what it’s like being trans in the 21st century.
Kick off Pride by streaming our flagship GLOW playlist.
The LGBTQIA+ community has greatly influenced music, and both music and culture have long been moved by the community in return. As more and more artists feel empowered to share their authentic selves onstage and off, the power and influence of queer creators grow as guiding forces across culture.
Today, Spotify introduces GLOW, a new global music program celebrating and amplifying LGBTQIA+ artists and creators. It’s our latest initiative to support people of this historically marginalized community of voices and reassert our commitment to equity in audio. It ensures that queer creators, and their contributions to music and culture, are heard and honored year-round.
GLOW is supported by an on- and off-platform ecosystem where LGBTQIA+ artists and users are authentically represented and meaningfully included.
All in, GLOW will streamline and heighten the support Spotify has provided through our annual global Pride activations. It will be available in 50+ markets across Europe, India, Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, the Nordics, and Southeast Asia.
To launch, we’re hosting LGBTQIA+ artists and songwriters at the Spotify At Mateo office in LA, including jesse saint john, who has written for Britney Spears, Lizzo, and Kim Petras; JHart, who has written for Troye Sivan, 5SOS, and Little Mix; Ilsey, who has written for Panic! at the Disco, Miley Cyrus, Mark Ronson, and Harry Styles); and INK, who has written for Beyoncé, Leon Bridges, and Lil Nas X. The attendees will participate in three days of writing sessions aimed at celebrating and inspiring collaboration among creators in the LGBTQIA+ community.
We recognize the power of our platform to elevate, uplift, and spotlight voices that have been historically marginalized, and we’re committed to using it to drive cultural change. GLOW is supported by Spotify’s Creator Equity Fund as the latest part of our ongoing commitment to fostering equity in the audio space. By providing equitable resources to queer artists on a global level, GLOW is another way we’re working to create greater equity, empathy, and representation for the LGBTQIA+ community. We work closely with our partners at GLAAD and others to ensure GLOW best represents LGBTQIA+ artists and listeners in authentic and meaningful ways.
The backbone of GLOW is Spotify employees who are passionate about music, artist empowerment, and above all else, their queer community.
I am a manager on our newly formed Artist Partnerships Team, but I’ve been in this type of role for the past three years. I currently work across pop, dance, and indie, finding ways that we can bring Spotify into the entirety of an artist’s career outside of a record cycle—touring, festivals, merchandise, integrating artists into campaigns within those genres and our playlists—finding new and creative ways to partner together with artists.
I’ve worked on Spotify’s Pride campaign for the past three years. I came in and was very, very passionate about LGBTQIA+ artists and how we can better serve that community and the fan base. After working on Pride, I started working on what would be an evergreen program very similar to Frequency or EQUAL with a colleague (the Head of Rock on our Editorial Team, Laura Ohls). We started working on this probably two years ago and in that time, the team has grown exponentially, become more robust, and received a lot of support company-wide.
I, along with the majority of the community, am very weary and skeptical of corporatized Pride. If a company is going to show up in June, they have to show up throughout the year. Where this program is amazing is that its sole purpose is to support the community on- and off-platform year-round. The way that we are showing up in this program also feels different—we’re supporting these artists because of who they are holistically. These are artists who are doing incredible things and they just so happen to be queer.
In the ’90s it was hard to find robust queer representation, and you had icons like Elton John and George Michael, so when The xx showed up and I found out that Romy and Oliver from The xx were both queer, it kinda blew my mind and it was the first time that I felt seen. St. Vincent was pretty huge for me and really made me understand myself more in college. Frank Ocean—truly, his tumblr coming-out letter, I want to get it framed and put it up in my house because that was so huge not only to me, but to music and culture in general—I think that was around the time that I was truly figuring myself out, so it meant a lot.
And the beautiful thing that we’re seeing now is just, more. The floodgates have opened and we have so many artists to choose from.
We always go back to this commitment to amplify LGBTQIA+ artists. So while there’s a lot of other flashy aspects of GLOW, and there’s billboards and there’s editorial support, behind all of that, the question we go back to is, ‘How do we tangibly influence the resources that LGBTQIA+ artists have?’ We know in the industry that there are hurdles that marginalized artists face in creating and putting out music that other artists don’t face.
We know that a lot of artists only get hit up in June during Pride to do campaigns. And then July 1 hits and there’s no work to be found again. Performative support wittles down an artist to their identity. If you only ask artists to activate during Pride, you ask them to give this boxed-in, performative version of themselves. For some artists, their identity is crucial to their work, right? It drives their writing, their artistry. For other artists, they’re just artists who happen to be LGBTQIA+ and they still should receive the support that LGBTQIA+ artists need. And we know that we, at Spotify, have a responsibility as the largest music audio platform in the world to fill in these gaps.
I am gay, so as someone who’s in the community, this program means so much to me. For example, Sam Smith, one of our 11 launch artists, their sophomore album, The Thrill Of It All, was my coming-out album and it saved my life in so many ways. I know firsthand how important LGBTQIA+ artists are for representation, but also for validation, and it just means a lot to see a company like Spotify really doing the amplification work. And to be helping lead the charge? I kind of have to pinch myself a lot and realize like, yeah, this isn’t just a campaign.
LGBTQIA+ culture is the culture. LGBTQIA+ artists, since the beginning of time, have shaped some of the biggest genres that we have—from disco to jazz to pop—and unfortunately, with the way our industry functions, artists aren’t given the proper tribute, support, or platform that matches the effect and impact of LGBTQIA+ artists’ contributions.
To me, it’s survival. Literally, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor being a gay anthem is an example, but it’s about connecting people, and it’s about safe space. We know that in New York and Chicago and Detroit and LA, the ballroom space was where Black and Latine queer folks who were shunned were able to go and shine. And music was the soundtrack to this. Even when queer culture and queer people were relegated to basements, to spaces deemed “unused” or in “disarray,” music kept those spaces alive.
Music is how I made sense of my emotions growing up. It gave me language to describe how I felt and gave me validation to feel confident in those emotions. Music is the soundtrack to our lives and to our survival, and it’s the soundtrack to our joy. Music is this creative playground where you’re allowed to imagine anything. Music is the most tangible thing we have to imagine queer futures that are happier and brighter and better and freer.
I lead our Equity Global Music Programs, such as GLOW and EQUAL. I am in charge of bringing our equity principles to life within Spotify’s 360 programs, which elevate and celebrate artists for who they are, around the world. I lead the go-to-market strategy through ideation, launch, and adoption. My role is focused on the vision of contributing to a music industry where everyone is fairly represented and included for who they are, and wherever they are from.
Within GLOW, my role is to take the program from ideation to launch and beyond, setting the overall strategy towards the mission of celebrating and elevating LGBTQIA+ creators and serving users all year round and beyond cultural moments. By bringing together my expertise in equity programs and in international strategy and in music, I have the privilege of being the connector of experts in over 20 different company functions and music representatives for the 50+ countries where GLOW is live, to ensure that this program utilizes Spotify’s resources as best as possible to serve the community and honor its immense contribution to music and culture.
I grew up in a small town in rural Argentina, where I didn’t have any positive examples of people being accepted, included, and celebrated for who they were. I migrated at a young age, which exposed me to more expansive experiences around sexual orientation and identity, but also to a new way of feeling different, of living within another culture. When I started working in music, which was always my passion, I had more positive experiences of inclusion through seeing colleagues from the community thrive and be inspired by the music itself, and I made it my mission to contribute to a world where we can all feel included and valued for who we are.
Today, I feel safe to be who I am in most places I inhabit, and I have the chance to put my experience, resources, and skills back in service, for more people to hopefully feel included and represented, too. To me, GLOW represents the opportunity and privilege to work within a company that is well positioned to drive social change, where people are passionate about equity and gather to take steps in that direction.
I know we live in a world that is far away from equity for all of us, that the issue is bigger than music, and that we can’t do it alone. But I also believe in the power of music, and I hope that GLOW can inspire and uplift more of our voices to the narrative, contributing to a future world where people are free to be.
Tune into GLOW to hear the latest, hottest songs coming from LGBTQIA+ artists around the world.
Today, Spotify announced our second quarter 2022 financial performance. Click here to review the full earnings release, and take a look at the highlights below:
Interested in hearing more? You can listen to the webcast Q&A on the IR site here.
Click below to check out a sizzle reel of audio trailers from a few of our recent original and exclusive podcasts.
Hear more from our CFO Paul Vogel in the latest episode of Spotify: For the Record.
Idag publicerar Spotify sina finansiella resultat för andra kvartalet 2022. Klicka här för att ta del av hela den finansiella pressreleasen och kolla in höjdpunkterna nedan:
Vill du höra mer? Lyssna gärna på vår Q&A-webcast på IR-sajten här.
Klicka nedan för att kolla in trailers från några av våra senaste original och exklusiva podcasts.
Representation of LGBTQIA+ individuals in audio continues to increase and improve. Stories once considered taboo now play out in podcasts around the world, and LGBTQIA+ musicians continue to light up listeners’ playlists. However, this progress is not universal, and many queer stories still go untold around the world.
Pride Month, which kicks off in select markets in June, is an annual opportunity to shine a light on those untold stories and increase knowledge of the issues LGBTQIA+ communities still face globally. On Spotify, we aim to use the power of our platform to provide a source for LGBTQIA+ storytelling, solidarity, and inspiration, and to increase awareness of the pressing issues—during Pride Month and year-round. This Pride Month, we’re celebrating these voices.
At the heart of this campaign is the desire to tell new stories from within the LGBTQIA+ community and to leverage our platform to uplift and shine a light on historically marginalized communities. We’ll center conversations around the importance of community, particularly for mental health and well-being, by focusing on a diverse group of traditionally underrepresented queer activists from the U.S., Sweden, the U.K., Japan, and Mexico. On our platform, we’ll be elevating, uplifting, and spotlighting these voices in an effort to drive cultural change. And we’ll be putting our money where our mouth is by donating directly to key partners that are focused on supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.
Head to our refreshed Pride Hub to hear from a diverse group of historically underrepresented activists, including Jonathan Lykes, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah (aka Lady Phyll), Karolyna Pollorena, and Fumino Sugiyama. Each one has curated a playlist that celebrates their work and their community, and they’ll be sharing short-form “a day in the life” videos across social. We’ll also be unveiling an audio series entitled RAISE YOUR VOICE from these activists, who are using sound, voice, and music as part of their work.
Each year, as Spotify celebrates Black History Month, we are offered an opportunity to take stock of how we are doing as a company when it comes to our work in the pursuit of racial equity. This February marks my first as Spotify’s Global Head of Equity & Impact, and it comes at a time when the company has faced new challenges as we learn and grow and the landscape evolves around us.
Making real and sustained progress has never been easy. Spotify understands the need for hard work, true reflection, and real accountability and we view our anti-racism efforts as an ongoing journey as we strive to live our values, both internally and externally. We are committed to fighting systemic racism and doubling down as this work advances. And while we still have plenty to do, we are making progress. That’s why, at each step of the way, we are looking to partners, employees, and creators to help guide our actions for the long term.
We also understand the need to regularly communicate the progress we’ve made and identify actions that will build upon it in the years ahead. As we close out Black History Month in the U.S., we recognize the need to do more to combat racism around the world.
So today, members of the Equity and Impact team—that’s me, Elizabeth Nieto, alongside Travis Robinson, Global Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, and Christopher Kenny, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Lead, Racial Equity Strategy—are sharing updates of both work we’ve done and work that’s underway across our global markets in the pursuit of racial equity.
This is but a snapshot of our focus areas in our ongoing commitment to fostering an anti-racist culture at Spotify. And while we know we are not perfect, we remain unwavering in our approach and commitment to making meaningful change and progress as a company.
With gratitude,
Elizabeth, Travis, and Christopher
We continue to collaborate with our external racial equity partners to inform how we can best leverage our brand and platform to mitigate systemic racism. Those conversations will inform our strategies for the year ahead and beyond. As one example, we support the healing and growth of our Spotify community through our partnership with Brooklyn Minds, a mental health organization. Brooklyn Minds facilitates sessions for employees who’ve been impacted by racial trauma. We also provide individualized support through our employee assistance program.
As we shared last April, Spotify’s Racial Equity Donations & Giving Program has committed $10 million—including the matching of $3 million from Spotify employee donations around the world—to over 300 organizations. The remaining $7 million has been donated to more than 15 organizations dedicated to inspiring, connecting, and elevating the next generation of Black voices and creators. This will be an annual commitment through our Racial Equity Donations & Giving Program. We also recently announced the creation of 28 scholarships to Black HBCU students, in partnership with UNCF (the United Negro College Fund).
Over the last several years, Spotifiers have built initiatives to identify, support, nurture, amplify, and celebrate the many voices of creators who deserve to be heard. Much more must be done to further this existing body of work, which is where our recently announced $100 Million Creator Investment Fund comes in. It’s important that we continue to create new avenues of support to champion artists, songwriters, and podcast creators from diverse backgrounds. Spotify can help them build their own businesses by establishing passionate fan bases and substantially growing their reach.
There’s great excitement for this work, with many ideas and questions about next steps we must take. While it’s critical to move swiftly, we also understand it will take time to get this work right. Spotifiers from teams including Music, Podcasting, and Equity & Impact are co-developing plans and working closely alongside our creator and industry partners for input. We’ll share early plans with our ERGs (employee resource groups) for their input and further refinement.
We have identified an initial list of the existing programs and opportunities where we think these funds can be put to work quickly, including adding incremental support to the ongoing work of Frequency, Sound Up, EQUAL, and Pride, among others. Additionally, we will dedicate talent and resources to help lead this global effort. We will work with internal teams and outside organizations to establish new programs focused on areas such as studio space, creator tools, marketing and PR support, coaching, and mentorship.
Last May, when Spotify launched Frequency—our global initiative and holistic destination for celebrating Black art, entertainment, creativity, culture, and community both on- and off-platform—we did so with a mission to create a space that represents the wide spectrum of Black artistry. Since then, listeners have tuned into Frequency music playlists like Ripple Effect and House Party and learned from the Heard You podcast playlist. We’re committed to celebrating and uplifting Black culture, creativity, and community year-round, with special emphasis on the month of February in honor of Black History Month in the U.S. This year, we’ve created a space to celebrate the multidimensionality of Black listeners, artists, and creators to truly encompass the breadth of Black creativity.
We recognize the need to do a better job of cascading these stories to a broader audience and will continue to scale our approach to our work of promoting Black stories and experiences. For example, we’ll amplify the great Black creators who are sharing stories that resonate with the community, like the Spotify original Who We Be TALKS_ from the U.K.
Our 2020 Sustainability, Equity & Impact Report charted the meaningful progress we’ve made through our cross-functional Spotify Racial Equity Coalition, alignment to our BLK 5-Star strategy, and expansion of the work of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging in a variety of ways. But it was only a first step in measuring our work and impact.
So in 2021 we restructured our organization to bring together three existing teams: Social Impact; Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging; and Sustainability. We did this because we believe in the power of our people, their stories, and the impact we have as a platform to imagine and deliver a sustainable future that is welcoming for all in a world that’s centered on justice, equity, and environmental sustainability. We’re seeing greater synergy and collaboration as a unified approach across our three groups. The cohesion of the team is reflected in our Sustainability, Equity & Impact report.
We launched inclusive storytelling training and education within Spotify’s Marketing, Music, and Podcasting Creator teams in 2021 and continue to conduct key diversity, equity, and inclusion sessions monthly. Within our Studios organization, efforts are underway to establish greater creator representation and also partner with anti-racism practitioners to train and educate all employees. We plan to relaunch our formal anti-racism training for employees this year.
While we have seen progress in our Black employee representation in the U.S. over the last four years (3.7% in 2017 to 9% by end of 2021), we are working on driving the same level of advancement toward diverse representation in our leadership ranks. In late 2021, we launched an inclusive hiring training course for all interviewers and hiring teams. Topics covered within this training are associated with anti-racism, microaggressions, bias, and other relevant diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations. In deep partnership with our Talent Acquisition team, the Inclusive Hiring team has also curated related sourcing and diversity recruiting partnerships that focus on greater visibility and identifying better ways of attracting talent to Spotify from underrepresented communities.
In 2022, we’ve been working hard to expand our inclusive hiring goals for racial diversity in the U.S. but have also begun the process of identifying areas of improvement in ethnic diversity in key markets globally. For instance, we are working to identify greater ways to increase Black, Asian and minority ethnic representation in our U.K. workforce. We will launch a workforce development conference for our Black Spotifiers across EMEA. In addition, in a few weeks we will launch our first-ever Global Belonging Week for all Spotifiers. This will feature global diversity, equity, and inclusion content, training and education for all band members to learn and also provide for localized “pass the mic” sessions where employees in specific offices will discuss topics such as anti-racism, intersectionality, and meaningful change.
Spotify kicked off June by announcing this year’s Pride campaign, CLAIM YOUR SPACE. The experience, complete with playlists, podcasts, and permanent in-person murals, served to celebrate the commitment and resilience of LGBTQIA+ creators. It also recognized the ways audio and art have always been avenues for LGBTQIA+ expression. We encouraged the queer community of creators and listeners to continue to make noise, make their presence known, and make their own rules.
We also used Pride Month as a time to encourage, empower, and amplify the voices of LGBTQIA+ Spotifiers within our own community. So as Pride Month comes to a close, our Life at Spotify social channels shared how several queer employees “claim their space” in the workplace, as well as the songs and aritsts that help them live their identities loud and proud.
Para Spotify, Pride se trata de crear un espacio permanente para las personas LGBTQIA + y sus historias, y brindar la oportunidad de un sentido de pertenencia que es tan fundamental en el proceso de salir del closet. En el nuevo podcast original de Spotify Coming Out: Emociones Compartidas, nos propusimos encontrar creadores icónicos de la comunidad para preguntarles sobre su historia, experiencias y lecciones de resiliencia.
Coming Out fue lanzado originalmente en Francia. Ahora, en su nueva temporada en México presenta las historias de invitados como Christian Chávez, Raymix, La Bruja de Texcoco, artista RADAR México, y la periodista de deportes Marion Reimers, entre otros.
Estas son algunas de las historias íntimas que los oyentes podrán descubrir exclusivamente en Spotify durante el mes de junio.
El actor y cantante Christian Chavez es conocido por millones de fanáticos por ser parte del fenómeno pop RBD. Y aunque muchos de ellos conocen su dura experiencia de salir del closet, nunca habían escuchado su historia tan personalmente. En el primer episodio de la serie, Christian cuenta su difícil momento en una escuela católica donde sufrió bullying, ofrece un relato gráfico de su primer beso y comparte su primera visita a un club gay. También describe su experiencia pública al salir del closet después de ser extorsionado por un tabloide en marzo de 2007.
“Escribí un comunicado llorando y ni siquiera podía escribir la palabra ‘gay’”, comparte en el episodio. “Al día siguiente hubo aplausos y expresiones de apoyo, aunque gran parte de la prensa fue hipócrita porque luego los medios se volvieron en mi contra para escribir historias sensacionalistas. “
Luego que se cancelaran varios proyectos por discriminación, Christian decidió retomar su carrera como solista y escribió Libertad, una canción que trata sobre ser uno mismo.
Marion Reimers es una exitosa narradora y comentarista y la voz en el podcast original de Spotify Fútbol a Muerte. En su episodio en Coming Out habla del periodismo deportivo como un espacio homofóbico, machista y patriarcal al que le costó demasiado tiempo incluir a una mujer lesbiana en sus filas. Desde niña sintió la urgencia de desafiar a la heteronorma y siempre prefirió jugar a los piratas que a la casita.
“Estoy muy orgullosa de quien soy”, cuenta Marion en su episodio. “La deconstrucción de normas sociales es un trabajo de todos los días, es muy pesado porque vivimos en una sociedad que nos enseñó a avergonzarnos y hay quien sigue usando este discurso para descalificarme. Yo me siento fuerte, tengo un entorno de amistades, de familia y compañeros en el trabajo que me han ayudado. No lo haces solo, lo haces a través de la comunidad. ”
Fabian Chairez es un artista plástico mexicano. Gran parte de su obra es un cuestionamiento a la masculinidad tóxica. Salto a la fama mainstream por su obra Revolución que muestra a un Emiliano Zapata en tacones y encima de un caballo blanco. La obra provocó un escándalo en grupos conservadores que entraron al Palacio de Bellas Artes decididos a prenderle fuego. Fueron detenidos por personal del museo, muchos de ellos LGBT+.
“Me mostraron la imagen cuando estaban golpeando a uno de ellos y de inmediato me llevó a ese momento en Chiapas cuando dos hombres me amenazaron con un cuchillo solo porque iba de la mano con mi novio. Y dije no, eso no puede volver a pasar. Si quieren pelear, aquí estoy. Empecé a dar entrevistas y hacer presente mi voz.”
Ana Julia Yeyé es comediante de stand-up y quizá por eso su salida del clóset es la más divertida del podcast. Cuenta la vez que salió con una chica con la intención de demostrarle que no era lesbiana y terminó por darse cuenta de justo lo contrario. Su primer beso logró que todas las piezas de su vida terminaran de encajar.
No hay fuerza más poderosa para cambiar mentes y corazones que el poder contar nuestras historias. Por eso Spotify se unió a It Gets Better México para ofrecer ayuda a jóvenes LGBT+ en temas de salud mental, sexual o grupos de apoyo.
Descubre las historias de creadores LGBTQIA+ y escucha Coming Out: Emociones compartidas a continuación.
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