King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard frontman Stu Mackenzie has spoken about the band’s decision to pull their music from Spotify in protest at CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in the arms sector.
He says he doesn’t expect Ek to notice or care – and he regrets that many of his fans won’t be able to hear the band’s music on their streaming service of choice – but “sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now’”.
Ek is an investor in German AI defence tech company Helsing via his venture capital business Prima Materia. He’s been involved in the defence firm since 2021, but that involvement has been back in the news of late because Prima Materia led a new €600 million funding round, and Ek himself is now Chair of the defence business’s board.
That prompted a small group of artists – also including Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu as well as King Gizzard – to pull their music from Spotify, in protest at the idea that Ek is using all the money he’s made from the streaming service to invest in the arms industry.
Asked in an interview with the LA Times about how he felt when he learned about Ek’s investments beyond Spotify, Mackenzie says it was “a bit of shock”, but that was followed by the “feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked”.
“We’ve been saying fuck Spotify for years”, he adds, based on various other grievances with the streaming giant which “are well documented”. Then he saw “a couple of other bands who we admire” take a stand and officially boycott the music platform over Ek’s investments, and thought “I don’t really want our music to be there, at least right now”.
Artists have boycotted Spotify before and it’s had minimal impact on the streaming service in terms of subscriber numbers. And Mackenzie isn’t expecting Ek to rethink his investments as a result of his band pulling their music, admitting “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this”.
However, the musician explains, leaving the Spotify platform still feels like the right thing to do. “I don’t really consider myself an activist”, he continues, “and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing”. But “this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about”.
Boycotting Spotify isn’t necessarily an option for all artists, even if they wanted to. Whether or not their music is on the platform may be their label’s decision. Or they may be relying on Spotify, either to make a living or to engage an audience to which they can sell tickets and merchandise.
Mackenzie says he’s not too concerned about the commercial impact of leaving Spotify, but does recognise that it makes it harder for fans to listen to their music.
“I don’t really care about making money from streaming”, he explains. “I know it’s unfair and I know they are banking so much, but for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it”. Therefore, the hardest part of the boycott “was to take that away from so many people”.
“But”, he goes on, “sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now’”. And once he’d decided that it was time to quit Spotify, it didn’t take long to get everyone else on board, he reveals, noting: “it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship”.
