Bands like Xiu Xiu (left) and Hotline TNT (proper) just lately pulled their music off Spotify, the world’s largest streaming service.
Eva Luise Hoppe; Graham Tolbert
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Eva Luise Hoppe; Graham Tolbert
Over the summer season, a slew of bands started to make comparable bulletins on social media: They’d be pulling their music off Spotify, the biggest streaming service on the earth.
It began in June with indie rock quartet Deerhoof. Inside weeks, teams like Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Hotline TNT adopted swimsuit. The wave of exits continued into September; most just lately, The Mynabirds, WU LYF, Kadhja Bonet and Younger Widows have all determined to go away Spotify. So why are musicians — lots of them unbiased — eradicating their songs from the most well-liked streamer globally, which has practically 700 million customers?
All artists cite Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s ties to Helsing, a man-made intelligence protection firm with a mission to “attain technological management in order that democratic societies are free to make sovereign choices and management their moral requirements.” In 2021, Ek’s enterprise capital agency Prima Materia invested greater than $100 million into the German startup. This previous June, Prima Materia raised greater than $700 million for Helsing, the place Ek is now additionally chairman. He advised The Monetary Instances that Prima Materia is “doubling down” on its investments in gentle of the position that AI performs in Russia’s battle on Ukraine. The Monetary Instances reported that Helsing is now producing its personal drones, plane and submarines.
It is not the primary time artists have determined to chop ties with Spotify. In 2013, Thom Yorke eliminated his solo albums from the streaming service to protest low royalty payouts (his music has since reappeared on the platform). The next yr, Taylor Swift wrote an op-ed in The Wall Road Journal arguing that “music shouldn’t be free” and pulled her songs from Spotify; three years later, she returned her discography to all streaming providers. In 2022, Neil Younger and Joni Mitchell left Spotify in objection to the corporate’s unique relationship with Joe Rogan, citing considerations that Rogan was spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his massively profitable podcast, The Joe Rogan Expertise. Younger and Mitchell ended their boycott in 2024 after Rogan’s podcast grew to become accessible on a number of streaming platforms.
However this most up-to-date exodus, which started shortly after the June fundraising information, marks a brand new wave of artist-led protests towards Spotify.
“We do not need our music killing folks. We do not need our success being tied to AI battle tech,” Deerhoof wrote in a press release shared with NPR. “Deerhoof is a small mother and pop operation, and know when sufficient is sufficient. We aren’t capitalists, and do not want to take over the world. Particularly if the value of ‘discoverability’ is letting oligarchs fill the globe with computerized weaponry, we’ll go on the supposed advantages.”
Spotify and Helsing declined to touch upon artists leaving the platform in protest of Ek’s investments. However a number of artists NPR spoke with say their considerations with Spotify span far past how the CEO spends his earnings.
“The sound high quality is horrible. The disposable-ness of music has turn out to be nearly culturally endemic, after which clearly the monetary facet of it’s a joke,” says Jamie Stewart of the experimental rock group Xiu Xiu. “It has not carried out something good for bands. It has carried out good issues for itself.”
Xiu Xiu fashioned in California in 2002. Stewart says the rise of file-sharing and iTunes triggered a near-immediate decline in royalties, however within the final decade and a half, the popularization of streaming platforms like Spotify has considerably worsened monetary compensation. In a press release shared with NPR, a Spotify spokesperson defined how the corporate’s payout mannequin is structured.
“All the main streaming providers use the identical professional rata mannequin for payouts to rightsholders, and we pay essentially the most,” the assertion reads. “On this mannequin, payouts are primarily based on streamshare, not a per-stream charge. Which means if an artist’s catalog accounts for 1% of whole streams, it could earn 1% of whole royalties. It is not a coincidence that the least fashionable streaming providers, the place folks hear the least, have the best per-stream charges, as lack of person engagement is strictly what drives a better per-stream charge.”
Spotify’s annual financial Loud & Clear report discovered that the corporate paid out $10 billion to the music business in 2024, essentially the most out of any streaming service. The variety of folks importing music to Spotify has additionally grown, which suggests “the fraction who discover success seems smaller over time.”
Stewart says Spotify is a big supply of digital income for Xiu Xiu, they usually’re anticipating to really feel an affect from exiting the platform. “We do not make very a lot cash in any respect to start with, nevertheless it’s sufficient that it is a noticeable quantity that we’ll not be making anymore,” they clarify. “It is not going to make any distinction to Spotify. However it’s a very, very small means of standing as much as what tech firms have turn out to be.”
Looking for options
In keeping with the Recording Trade Affiliation of America, recorded music income has been rising persistently for practically a decade, and streaming is the biggest driver of that progress. However a survey carried out in 2024 by MusiCares — the nonprofit based by the Recording Academy to assist the monetary, psychological and bodily well-being of musicians — discovered that 69% of respondents can not cowl bills from working in music alone. The artists NPR spoke with expressed frustration that regardless of record-breaking income for each the recording business and streaming providers, that cash doesn’t appear to all the time trickle all the way down to the artists.
“It is actually arduous to have superhigh rules at this level with how problematic so many of those firms are,” says Seth Hubbard, director of Xiu Xiu’s label, Polyvinyl Data. “When you begin trying below the hood a bit, plenty of it’s problematic. After which the place do you draw the road?”
For singer Kadhja Bonet, the reply is obvious. After negotiating an early exit from her former label, Bonet introduced in August that every one future releases, together with her upcoming EP Battlewear, out Sept. 18, is not going to be accessible on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Amazon or YouTube.
“We give these tech giants energy by furnishing them with all of our greatest concepts and driving enterprise their means,” Bonet wrote in a press release shared with NPR. “I put plenty of thought and love into the music I make, so it is solely proper to place the identical thought into the best way it is delivered.”
She recommends different platforms and digital shops like Qobuz and Bandcamp. The indie rock band Hotline TNT, which introduced its departure from Spotify in August, can be specializing in substitute income streams. On Sept. 5, singer and guitarist Will Anderson hosted a 24-hour livestream on Twitch, YouTube and Instagram to advertise gross sales of the band’s newest album, Raspberry Moon. Anderson, who began Hotline TNT as a solo mission a number of years in the past, bought over 300 copies of the album on Bandcamp alone, which he says accounts for extra revenue in 24 hours than the band normally makes in months of Spotify streams. He says followers have been supportive of the group’s determination to half methods with Spotify, main report gross sales to triple on tour.
“I wish to see shopper spending habits drift again into possession over this rental system now we have proper now,” Anderson says. “When somebody buys one in every of our data at a present, nobody’s going to take the music off their shelf in a single day like we simply did with Spotify.”
A brand new actuality
For some artists, a push towards that possession mannequin works. In January, folk-pop chameleon Caroline Rose introduced that her new album, yr of the slug, wouldn’t be accessible on any streaming platforms. As an alternative, with Rose impressed by an identical launch mannequin utilized by artist Cindy Lee, the album can be accessible for buy on Bandcamp or immediately from Rose on a solo tour of all-independent venues.
“It’s a must to attempt ever so barely tougher, or you must come to a present and get an album,” she says. “We solely had a restricted variety of vinyl that we have been promoting, so as soon as it bought, it bought. I miss that feeling that one thing was particular, that there was a restricted quantity of it.”
Rose says the rollout was the end result of years of frustration with the business’s emphasis on income and numbers, all of which was exacerbated in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, when label and tech executives continued to make cash whereas artists canceled excursions and struggled to get by.
“It simply felt like we have been being ignored and forgotten and everyone else was simply type of biding their time till they might return to work and every part can be regular once more,” she says. “It felt catastrophic, and that feeling has solely turn out to be greater.”
When her label contract ended, Rose says, she breathed a sigh of reduction and determined to attempt one thing totally different. In February, yr of the slug got here out as a very unbiased mission; it is also her most worthwhile report thus far as a result of it is the one one she totally owns. Extra importantly, she says, the suggestions from followers has been overwhelmingly supportive.
Rose admits that there are drawbacks — this sort of launch does not lend itself to discovery by new slightly than current listeners, and it could turn out to be way more troublesome to financially maintain a tour with a full band slightly than by herself. However for now, it was the break she wanted.
“It has been extraordinarily fulfilling, and personally, I wanted this simply to really feel a bit bit extra connection to my followers and to the viewers. I meet folks. Now we have drinks collectively. It feels very communal,” says Rose. “I need a profession of high quality slightly than any and every part quantifiable. I do not wish to be hounded by stats and cash and what number of ticket gross sales I am promoting. It is not a top quality life to me.”
