Artists leave ‘garbage hole’ platform after CEO invests in AI weapons

Greg Saunier already had reasons to be wary of Spotify. The founder of the acclaimed Bay Area band Deerhoof was well acquainted with the service’s meager payouts to artists and songwriters, often estimated around $3 per thousand streams. He was unnerved by the service’s splashy pivots into AI and podcasting, where right-wing, conspiracy-peddling hosts like Joe Rogan got multimillion-dollar contracts while working musicians struggled.

But Saunier hit his breaking point in June, when Spotify’s Chief Executive Daniel Ek announced that he’d led a funding round of nearly $700 million (through his personal investment firm, Prima Materia) into the European defense firm Helsing. That company, which Ek now chairs, specializes in AI software integrated into fighter aircraft like its HX-2 AI Strike Drone. “Helsing is uniquely positioned with its AI leadership to deliver these critical capabilities in all-domain defence innovation,” Ek said in a statement about the funding round.

In response, Deerhoof pulled its catalog from Spotify. “Every time someone listens to our music on Spotify, does that mean another dollar siphoned off to make all that we’ve seen in Gaza more frequent and profitable?” Saunier said, in an interview with The Times. “It didn’t take us long to decide as a band that if Daniel Ek is going harder on AI warfare, we should get off Spotify. It’s not even that big of a sacrifice in our case.”

A small band yanking its catalog won’t make much impact on Spotify’s estimated quarterly revenues of $4.8 billion. But it seemed to inspire others: several influential acts subsequently left the service, lambasting Ek for investing his personal fortune into an AI weapons firm.

Spotify did not return request for comment about Ek’s Helsing investments.

Read more: Spotify walks back its controversial ‘hate content’ policy

This small exodus is unlikely to sway Ek, or dislodge Spotify from dominating the record economy. But it may further sour young music fans on Spotify, as many are outraged about wars in Gaza and elsewhere.

“There must be hundreds of bands right now at least as big as ours who are thinking of leaving,” Saunier said. “I thought we’d be fools not to leave, the risk would be in staying. How can you generate good feelings between fans when musical success is intimately associated with AI drones going around the globe murdering people?”

Swedish mogul Ek, with an estimated wealth around $9 billion, may seem an unlikely new player in the global defense industry. But his interest in Helsing goes back to 2021, when Ek invested nearly $115 million from Prima Materia and joined the company’s board. [Helsing, based in Germany, says it was founded to “help protect our democratic values and open societies” and puts “ethics at the core of defense technology development.”]

With his investment, Ek joined tech moguls Jeff Bezos and Palmer Luckey in pivoting from nerdier cultural pursuits (like online bookselling and virtual reality) into defense. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers said then that Ek’s actions “prove once again that Ek views Spotify and the wealth he has pillaged from artists merely as a means to further his own wealth.”

Read more: ‘If we don’t get paid, songs don’t get made’: Songwriters take to the streets against Spotify

A range of anti-Spotify protests followed later, like a songwriters’ rally in West Hollywood in 2022 and a boycott of Spotify’s 2025 Grammy party, after Spotify cut $150 million from songwriter royalties. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their catalogs in response to Rogan spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

Yet eventually, both relented. “Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” Young said in a pithy note in 2022. “I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created.”

Ek’s latest investment seems to have struck a nerve though, especially in the corners of music where Spotify slashed income to the point where artists have little to lose by leaving.

After Deerhoof’s announcement, the influential avant-garde band Xiu Xiu announced a similar move. “We are currently working to take all of our music off of garbage hole violent armageddon portal Spotify,” they wrote. “Please cancel your subscription.”

Read more: Ava DuVernay is the latest artist to follow Neil Young’s exit from Spotify because of Joe Rogan

The Amsterdam electronic label Kalahari Oyster Cult had similar reasoning: “We don’t want our music contributing to or benefiting a platform led by someone backing tools of war, surveillance and violence,” they posted.

Most significantly, the Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard — an enormously popular group that will headline the Hollywood Bowl Aug. 10. — said last week that it would pull its dozens of albums from Spotify as well. “A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology,” the band wrote, announcing its departure. “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better?”

“We’ve been saying ‘f— Spotify’ for years. In our circle of musicians, that’s what people say all the time for well-documented reasons,” the band’s singer Stu Mackenzie said in an interview. “I don’t consider myself an activist, but this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves. We saw other bands we admire leaving, and we realized we don’t want our music to be there right now.”

Ek’s moves with Prima Materia come as no surprise to Glenn McDonald, a former data analyst at Spotify who became well known for identifying trends in listener habits. McDonald was laid off in 2023, and has mixed feelings about the company’s priorities today. It’s both the arbiter of the record industry and a mercurial tech giant that only became profitable last year while spinning off enormous wealth for Ek.

“It’s well documented that Spotify was only a music business because that was an open niche,” McDonald said. “I’m never surprised by billionaires doing billionaire things. Google or Apple or Amazon investing in a company that did military technology wouldn’t surprise me. Spotify subscribers should feel dismayed that this is happening, but not responsibility, because all the major streamers are about the same in moral corporate terms.”

Read more: Comedians wanted Spotify to pay them more royalties. Their albums were removed

McDonald said the company’s push toward Discovery Mode — where artists accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for better placement in its algorithm — added to the sense that Spotify is antagonistic to working artists’ values. More recently, Spotify rankled progressives when it sponsored a Washington, D.C., brunch with Rogan and Ben Shapiro celebrating President Trump’s return to the White House, and raised $150,000 for Trump’s inauguration (Apple and Amazon also donated to the inauguration).

While Ek’s investments in Helsing are not directly tied to Spotify, the money does come from personal wealth built through his ownership of Spotify’s stock. Fans are right to make a moral connection between them, McDonald said.

“Ek represents Spotify publicly, and thus its commitment to music. Him putting money into an AI drone company isn’t representing that,” McDonald said. “He can do whatever he wants with his money, but he is the face of a company as controversial and culturally important as Spotify. So yeah, people want to hold him to a less neutral standard.”

For artists looking to leave the service, the actual process of getting off Spotify varies. For King Gizzard, which releases its catalog on its own record labels, it was easy to remove everything quickly. Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu needed time to clear the move with several labels and former band members who receive royalties.

Being a smaller, autonomous band enabled Saunier to act according to his values, even at the cost of some meaningful slice of income. He has considered that, by torching his band’s relationship with Spotify, Deerhoof’s music could slip from away from some fans.

“Everyone I know hates Spotify, but we’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no other option,” he said. “But underground music is filled with so many beautiful examples of a mom-and-pop business mentality. I don’t need to dominate the world, I don’t need to be Taylor Swift to be counted as a success. I don’t need a global reach, I just need to provide myself a good life.”

Read more: Letters to the Editor: Neil Young put his money where his mouth is. Spotify did not

Yet the only artists that might genuinely sway Ek’s investments would be ones with a global reach on the caliber of Swift. She has pulled her catalog from Spotify before, in 2014 just after releasing her smash album “1989.”

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for,” she said, before eventually returning to Spotify in 2017.

It’s hard to imagine her, or other comparable pop acts, taking a similar stand today, especially as the major labels’ fortunes are so bound up in Spotify revenues. Spotify reported a $10 billion payout to rights holders in 2024, roughly a quarter of the entire global recorded music business. Its stock has surged 120% over the last year, but in the second quarter of 2025, the firm missed earnings targets and dropped 11% this week, for the stock’s worst day in two years. “While I’m unhappy with where we are today, I remain confident in the ambitions we laid out for this business,” Ek said in an earnings call.

This recent, small exodus most likely didn’t contribute to that. But it might add to a creeping sense among young listeners that Spotify is not a morally-aligned place for fans to enjoy beloved songs.

“I actually think Spotify will eventually go the way of MySpace. It’s just a get-rich-quick scheme that will pass, become uncool, one that had its day and is probably in decline,” Saunier said. “They wrote an email to me seemingly to do face saving, which makes me think they’re more desperate than we think.”

Read more: Joni Mitchell returns to Spotify two years after boycott over Joe Rogan’s COVID-19 ‘lies’

Acts like Kneecap, Bob Vylan and others have been outspoken around the war on Gaza, at real risk to their careers — proof that young fans care deeply about these issues. While Ek would argue that Helsing helps Ukraine and Europe defend itself, others may not trust his judgment.

“Maybe it’s silly to expect cultural or moral leadership from Daniel Ek, but I don’t want it to be silly,” McDonald said. He thinks fans and artists can morally stay on Spotify, but hopes they build toward a more ethical record industry.

“It’s hard to see what ‘stay and fight’ consists of, but if everyone leaves, nothing gets better,” he said. “If we’re going to get a better music business, it’s going to come from somebody starting over from scratch without major labels, and somehow building to a point where we have enough leverage to change the power dynamic.”

King Gizzard’s Mackenzie looks forward to finding out how that might work. “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to us, though it would be cool if he did,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve made a lot of experimental moves in music and releasing records. People who listen to our music have been conditioned to have trust and faith to go on the ride together. I feel grateful to have that trust, and this feels like an experiment to me. Let’s just go away from Spotify and see what happens.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.