Following the singer’s sex offense conviction, YouTube has taken down R. Kelly’s channels.
R. Kelly, the embattled R&B artist who was convicted guilty of sex offenses last week, has had two of his channels permanently suspended by YouTube. In the future, the platform will not allow him to create any new channels.
Kelly’s music, on the other hand, has not been removed from YouTube; On YouTube Music, the online video giant will continue to offer the singer’s entire music discography.
According to Variety, YouTube banned the two channels — RKellyTV (3.5 million subscribers) and RKellyVevo (1.6 million subscribers) — on Tuesday, alleging a breach of its terms of service.
“Egregious actions committed by R. Kelly warrant penalties beyond standard enforcement measures due to a potential to cause widespread harm,” YouTube VP of legal Nicole Alston wrote in a memo, as reported by Bloomberg. “Ultimately we are taking this action to protect our users similar to other platforms.”

Kelly’s official accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook also have recently been disabled.
YouTube’s move to delete Kelly’s channels comes eight days after a federal jury found him guilty of racketeering and eight charges of an anti-sex trafficking law. Kelly is set to be sentenced on May 4, 2022. The 54-year-old faces 10 years to life in prison.
YouTube said it pulled down the channels linked to R. Kelly in accordance with its “creator responsibility guidelines” That policy prohibits “on- and/or off-platform behavior that we may consider to be inappropriate,” including “intending to cause malicious harm to others” and “participating in abuse or violence, demonstrating cruelty, or participating in fraudulent/deceptive behavior leading to real-world harm.”
Kelly’s longtime label, Sony Music’s RCA Records, parted ways with the singer in January 2019 after months of criticism. However, nearly his entire catalog remains with the label and is still available on major music-streaming services.
In a survey conducted by Morning Consult after Kelly’s conviction, 44% of audio-streaming service users said platforms like Spotify and Apple Music should remove his music from their catalogs, while 36% said his songs should stay up and 20% had no opinion or said they didn’t know.
Following decades of people coming forward to accuse him of sex crimes, Kelly was found guilty on September 27 in a federal court in New York for directing a scheme to recruit women and girls for sex. Kelly was cleared of child pornography charges in Illinois in 2008, but he is still facing accusations in the state.
During the trial, one witness claimed that they witnessed Kelly sexually abusing late R&B singer Aaliyah when she was 13 or 14, according to the Associated Press.
Kelly is also accused of locking a radio intern in a room where she passed out and sexually assaulting her, videotaping a woman wiping feces on her face as punishment for not following his rules, and deliberately giving multiple individuals herpes, according to witnesses.
Ada Peter






















