ADVERTISEMENT The prolific Australian psych-rock group King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard is the latest band to cut ties with Spotify in protest of CEO Daniel Ek’s increasing ties with the arms industry – specifically his investment in a controversial AI-driven military tech firm.
Ek co-founded the investment firm Prima Materia, which has invested heavily in Helsing, a German company developing AI for use in warfare, including drone technology.
The Financial Times recently reported that Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round for Helsing and had previously backed the company before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The news has sparked strong backlash from musicians who say they no longer want to be associated with a platform whose profits are being funnelled into weapons development.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, known for hits like ‘Work This Time’ and ‘Robot Stop’, have removed nearly all of their music from Spotify, only leaving a few releases due to existing licensing deals. They announced the decision on Instagram, stating their new demos were available “everywhere except Spotify,” adding “f*** Spotify.”
Other artists have taken similar action. American indie group Deerhoof posted a statement saying they don’t want their “music killing people” and described Spotify as a “data-mining scam.” Experimental rock group Xiu Xiu also criticised the platform, calling it a “garbage hole armageddon portal” and urged fans to cancel their Spotify subscriptions.
These protests add to a growing list of controversies and concerns surrounding the streaming platform. Spotify recently came under fire after allowing an AI-generated band called Velvet Sundown, which has managed to rack up millions of streams, to appear on its platform with a “verified artist” badge.
Euronews Culture’s very own music aficionado David Mouriquand described it as “a prime example of autocratic tech bros seeking to reduce human creation to algorithms designed to eradicate art.”
He added: “When artists are expressing real, legitimate concerns over the ubiquity of AI in a tech-dominated world and the use of their content in the training of AI tools, the stunt comes off as tone-deaf. Worse, morally shameless.”
And while Spotify announced in its Loud & Clear 2024 report that it paid over $10 billion (€9.2 billion) to the music industry in 2024 alone, critics argue that most of those payouts go to just a small percentage of top artists and labels, and that the platform still underpay and exploit the vast majority of musicians.
Icelandic musician Björk put it most bluntly: “Spotify is probably the worst thing that has happened to musicians.”
