King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard made a bold move over the weekend in regards to their online musical presence, completely removing their entire discography from Spotify. Their sole presence on the platform as of July 29th, 2025 are four songs featured on compilation albums: ‘Phantom Island’, ‘Le Risque’, ‘The Dripping Tap’ and ‘Daily Blues’. Their remix of Confidence Man‘s ‘Sicko’, from the group’s remix album 5am (La La La) from April 2025, also remains on the platform.
The psych-rock sextet revealed their decision on Saturday (July 25th), as they shared a new compilation entitled Demos Vol. 7 + Vol. 8 – noting it was available “everywhere but Spotify”. To make their position exceptionally clear, they followed this up by adding: “Fuck Spotify.” An Instagram story by the band was then shared, with the background of the story featuring a photo of the controversial and heavily criticised AI-generated band The Velvet Sundown, who have accumulated over 1.3 million monthly listeners on Spotify and released three albums despite not actually existing.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – ‘Le Risque’
“A PSA for those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology,” the band wrote. “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.” King Gizzard are the latest, and arguably the most prominent, act to join an ongoing boycott against the platform over Ek’s involvement with Helsing, a company he chairs that develops military drones, surveillance and AI software.
Internationally, groups such as Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu have pulled their music from the platform in protest, while locally acts like Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice, Leah Senior and Hugh F. have done the same. “We need to send a message that this is not OK, and that’s going to affect your business,” said Dr. Sure’s frontman Dougal Shaw in a statement shared to the band’s Instagram account.
“They’re taking the fruits of our labour and using it to fund the war machine. We’re not going to let your business just tick over. We have very little impact [with] our little boycott, I’m aware of that, but there needs to be solidarity. We need to come together. There needs to be established artists, whose absence will actually be felt, to come on board. Let’s collectively draw a line in the sand.”
King Gizzard will be touring nationally in December; the full details are available here.
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