Boycott against Spotify over its founder's multi-million dollar investment in AI military technology

The umpteenth boycott campaign against Spotify (there have been others before for its royalty conditions, for hosting denialist podcasts, etc.) is already taking shape and spreading throughout the world, after the American band Deerhof started the alarm last week with the announcement of the withdrawal of its music from the platform, following the revelation that the CEO of the streaming platform, Daniel Ek, has invested 700 million dollars in Helsing , a German weapons company designed with Artificial Intelligence.

“We’re leaving Spotify,” the veteran San Francisco indie band said in a statement, which continued: “Daniel Ek used $700 million of his Spotify fortune to become the CEO of an AI-powered war technology company. That wasn’t a headline we were happy to read this week. We don’t want our music to kill people. We don’t want our success tied to AI war technology.”

The quartet acknowledges that they are "privileged" because, in their case, the decision was "quite easy" to make. "Spotify only pays a pittance, and we earn much more from touring. But we also understand that other artists and labels depend on Spotify for a larger portion of their income, and we don't judge those who can't do the same in the short term."

The statement explains in detail its position on the fate of those hundreds of millions in Spotify profits: “ AI-powered combat technology is clearly becoming the new hot item for the super-rich. It is increasingly clear that the military and police exist primarily as security for the billionaire class. The more computers kill, the better their bottom line. Computerized targeting, computerized extermination, computerized destabilization for profit, successfully tested on the population of Gaza, also finally solves the perennial drawback for those who wage war: it removes human compassion and morality from the equation.”

Deerhoof claims that Spotify is “flushing itself down the toilet,” and that “eventually, artists will want to abandon this already widely hated data-mining scam masquerading as a music company, which is creepy for users and shitty for artists.” They conclude: “Deerhoof is a small, family-run company that knows when enough is enough. We’re not capitalists, and we don’t want to take over the world. Especially if the price of ‘discoverability’ is letting oligarchs fill the globe with computerized weaponry, we’re going to give up on the supposed benefits. We think this dilemma will come to a head soon, and we predict that most people won’t side with the billionaires.”

The group has the support of their label Joyful Noise, "something to be grateful for, as they are sharing the financial blow." In another statement, the label says it is "sickened" that its releases "have inadvertently contributed to the global war machine," and analyzes the situation this way: "Since the dawn of streaming, independent artists and labels have been forced to participate alongside various streaming entities in order to survive, entities that are often funded by sources that do not align with our values. We do not judge any artist who wishes to keep their music on the platform. However, we encourage true music lovers to purchase directly from the artists or the record label whenever possible."

This brave move has been followed by artists like Australian Leah Senior, who began removing her catalog after making these statements to The Music Network: "The moment I saw that Daniel Ek is investing in military AI technology, something snapped and I was like, 'Enough.' We all know Spotify is bad, it always has been bad, but artists are made to feel like we need it, like it's a necessary evil in today's music world. Well, I say we don't need them."

The band Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice is also removing their music from Spotify and is calling for a "wider boycott" that will put more pressure on Daniel Ek. "It's hard to feel like we'll have any impact as a smaller artist, but if we can get more established artists on board, we think it can be a powerful campaign. Our work, our labor, is almost the only tool we have."

Dutch dance music label Kalahari Oyster Cult has already withdrawn most of its catalog, and in the Spanish-speaking scene, the first to speak out has been Rubén Albarrán, leader of the renowned Mexican band Café Tacvba , who, through a video, has warned about the danger of normalizing this type of investments "that could currently be used against children in Sudan, in the Congo, in Palestine, in Ukraine," and states: "The boycott is our weapon. As artists, this is the true commitment to our society."

Meanwhile, social media is filling up with comments from Spotify users saying they are going to cancel their subscription . “Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription: why am I paying for a shitty app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while the CEO spends all my money on techno-fascist military fantasies?” said one user on X. Another wrote: “When technology becomes a weapon, our subscriptions become bullets. Spotify doesn’t have clean hands: boycott silence, boycott blood. No art should fund destruction.”

Another user says: "Your money is paying for military drones while artists starve. This is evil. Ek is profiting off the value of artists, not seeing them and reinvesting their profits in killing machines." The United Musicians and Allied Workers union also spoke out, calling Ek a "warmonger who pays artists poverty wages":