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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have become the most high-profile band to remove their music from Spotify in protest at the company’s CEO Daniel Ek’s investments in a military technology company.
Earlier this year, Californian indie band Deerhoof pulled their music from the streaming platform after discovering that Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia had invested heavily in German defense technology startup Helsing: Eks also happens to be the chairman of the company.
Helsing sells software that uses AI technology “to inform military decisions in real time”, and manufactures military drones.
“‘Daniel Ek uses $700 million of his Spotify fortune to become chairman of AI battle tech company’ was not a headline we enjoyed reading this week,” Deerhoof posted on Instagram as the introduction to an extended explanation of their reasoning. ““We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.”
This weekend, King Gizzard announced that they were releasing a new demos collection, “out everywhere except Spotify”, adding “fuck Spotify”.
In a subsequent post on Instagram Stories, the band wrote, “A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Eks invests millions in AI military drone technology. 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.”
Credit: King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard Instagram
Californian indie band Xiu Xiu also announced last week that it was removing its music from the “garbage hole violent armageddon portal” and urged fans “PLEASE CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION WITH SPOTIFY.”