Controversy at Spotify after a controversial decision of the company chief: “We do not want our music to kill people”

Several artists, including King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu, withdraw their music from Spotify in protest against CEO Daniel Ek investment in an artificial intelligence military technology company, writes Euronews.com.

The prolific Australian group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard is the latest band that cuts the connections with Spotify in protest compared to the closer ties of the general director Daniel EK-especially his investment in a controversial military technology based on artificial intelligence.

EK co-founded the investment company Prima Matter, which has massively invested in Helsing, a German company that develops artificial intelligence for use in war, including drone technology, writes the source.

The Financial Times recently reported that the first matter ran a 600 million euro financing round for Helsing and previously supported the company before the 2022 Russia invasion in Ukraine.

Many artists give up Spotify

The news has aroused strong reactions from musicians, who say they no longer want to be associated with a platform whose profits are directed to the development of weapons.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, known for hits such as “Work this time” and “Robot Stop”, eliminated almost all their music on Spotify, leaving only a few launches due to existing license contracts. They announced the decision on Instagram, saying that their new demos were available “everywhere, except Spotify”, adding “F *** Spotify”.

Other artists have taken similar measures. The American Indie Deerhoof group posted a statement saying that they do not want “their music to kill people” and described Spotify as a “data extraction scam”.

The Xiu Xiu experimental rock group also criticized the platform, and urged its fans to cancel their Spotify subscriptions.

“It is devoid of moral shame”

These protests are added to an increasing list of controversies and concerns about the streaming platform. Spotify was recently criticized after allowing a band generated by AI, called Velvet Sundown, who managed to gather millions of streams, to appear on his platform with a “verified artist” badge.

“When artists express their real and legitimate concerns regarding the ubiquity of artificial intelligence in a world dominated by technology and the use of their content in the formation of artificial intelligence tools, this is devoid of moral shame,” says David Mouriquand, a journalist at Euronews Culture.

While Spotify announced in its Loud & Clear 2024 report that it has paid over $ 10 billion (9.2 billion euros) to the music industry only in 2024, critics claim that most of these payments go to only a small percentage of artists and top -of -record houses and that the platform continues to exploit the vast majority of musicians.

The Icelandic musician Björk said the worst: “Spotify is probably the worst thing that happened to the musicians.”

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