Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming platform, is facing intense criticism and boycott calls following CEO Daniel Ek’s announcement of a €600m ($702m) investment in Helsing, a German defence startup specialising in AI-powered combat drones and military software.
The move, announced on 17 June, has sparked widespread outrage from musicians, activists and social media users who accuse Ek of funnelling profits from music streaming into the military industry.
Many have started calling on users to cancel their subscriptions to the service.
“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.
I stopped using Spotify long ago because of their shitty business practices. Producing a product they killed support for within just a couple years without reimbursing customers and producing huge amounts of e-waste. Jacking their subscription prices twice in one year. Apparently, they also donated to Trump despite not being an American company?? That’s to say nothing of their shitty recommendation algorithm, which just plays your most played tracks over and over. Good riddance.
For those interested, I use Tidal now. I’m satisfied with, their recommendation algo is fine and the higher quality streaming is really nice but nothing I’ve used has ever been as good as Google Play Music, I found so much good music though that service and could upload whatever I was missing. Once Tidal inevitably pisses me off, I’m going to move on to self hosting.
Being able to upload to Google Play Music was such a great feature. Honestly though, maybe it’s best that they killed it when they did. That way it can live on in memory as the example of what a music streaming service should be like… instead of becoming an enshittified zombie like spotify is today.
Spotify CEO also donated millions to trump campaign.
Funny enough, for local downloads of video game OSTs (which I like way too much), I’ve been recently turning to Steam of all things. Often cheaper than Bandcamp and DRM-free!
damn people are just learning that spotify is a shitty pro fascist/pro white supremacist company?
“Said one user on X.”
Who’s calling for that boycott? Putin?
Respect for the true pacifists out there, but investing in EU-based defense industry is hardly questionable by ordinary standards.
Europe used the specter of Russia to justify it’s dive into militant fascism the last time too.
False. Western Europe increased arms spending in response to German aggression. Germany increased arms spending… well.
Germany, famously not part of Europe.
Germany increased arms spending… well.
Well what? The specter of Russia was a huge part of how Germany justified it’s fascism.
Just like now.
False.
Germany built up it’s army in preparation for attacking the rest of Europe. Adults usually know this. Sorry if I have misjudged your age.
Germany and Soviet Russia were allies and cooperated in the attack on Poland. This only fell apart when Hitler betrayed Stalin by invading the Soviet Union.
It is said that in all his life, Stalin only ever trusted one person: Adolf Hitler. When German communists conscripted into the Wehrmacht defected in the night before the attack, to bring warning to the Soviet Union, Stalin had them shot. The last supply train carrying grain for Nazi Germany crossed the border less than 2 hours before the launch.
That’s a dog’s breakfast of anti-communist slander you’ve gobbled up, Mr. Adultman. This is the garbage they taught in West Germany? I guess that’s one of the consequences of Stalin stopping at Berlin.
West Germany
Oh wow. Looks like you fell into a time warp, comrade. No spoilers but it’ll all get better in 1953. But stay away from Moscow in March.
It is said that in all his life, Stalin only ever trusted one person: Adolf Hitler.
It must be so easy being a right winger: you can just make up any old bullshit off the top of your head and apparently people will believe you.
Been thinking of booting them for a whilst. Just cancelled. Better late than never.
Yeah - been talking about doing so for quite a long time, and then signing up to a Qobuz family plan, downloading all their apps, and cancelling everything Spotify has taken all of five minutes. Hardly even interrupted the album we were listening to via Chromecast. There’s a lesson to be learned somewhere.
Qobuz’ recommendations and albums-of-the-week actually look good, too. Like an actual music enthusiast has picked things out, rather than Spotify’s slop.
Same story here. I cancelled Spotify after the whole Trump thing and switched to Qobuz; the whole thing was pretty seamless. I’ve got to say, the increased quality is actually noticeable and, as you said, the curated selections actually seem to be, well, curated. Also, if you’ve got a load of playlists on Spotify you want to keep, Qobuz actually provides subscribers with free access to a migartion service that did a superb job.
I switched to Tidal and love it.
I think that’s the worry. Do I have to start again. Will my stuff be disrupted. Spotify has counted on me sleepwalking though with them and not moving because of this fear. They have had enough of my money.
I had to laugh at the leaving page “if you leave me now you’ll take away the biggest part of me”. Spotify is not a human and I’ll take my money. They need to get lost with the emotive marketing, Spotify and the CEOs actions speak louder.
My hard earned money and who I spend it with is one of my biggest voices in my world.
What’s up with the cool startup names recently? First Palantir the fortune teller ball, now Helsing the vampire hunter? Fuck yeah, who doesn’t invest in these? /s
thiel has an obsession with lotr, so he named all his evil companies after various lotr themes.
I thought we were already boycotting this shit
Out of every company I would have never expected Spotify to be one of the ones to want that
There are lots of reasons to boycott Spotify and call out Ek for being a fascism enabler but this is not one. Helsing is a promising project that could give Europe the edge in the face of Russian imperialist aggression. If anything, we need more companies shaking up the crusty MIC. They also provide important military aid to Ukraine.
The Germans can surely be trusted with AI murder tech.
Do you want Germany to take part in the NATO defense quotas or not?
Jokes on them, I moved to CD and love it
Got 80GB of music on my phone, tried Spotify once, it was all live versions…
I can’t speak for how viable it is for success or whether it’s just a grift (as I haven’t had the time to really research into it) but feels like as good a time as any to mention that, out in Australia, The Pack Music Cooperative is fundraising for a cooperative music streaming service: https://www.thepackaustralia.com.au/
They haven’t raised a lot towards their goal, yet, and could probably use an the help they can get. As a cooperative, they’ll side step a lot of the probably problems a corporation like Spotify or Tidal will have and they already are dedicated to prioritizing artists and their rights.
Must be so nice to be so privileged as to be spoiled for choice on which fascist to support.
Spotify is the only streaming service available worldwide other than YouTube Music and Apple.
So for a lot of people it is either piracy or supporting a US tech megacorporation. Tidal, Qobuz, deezer. Cool, nice that they exist options. But most people in the planet would have to also pay a VPN and hope to not get their account banned if they want to use some of those alternatives.
It’s funny really, to see how the “fascist option” for some is actually the most ethical for others.
There’s always piracy of course, I suppose that is the only morally correct option always.
Yarr
Is there a p2p music streaming platform yet?
It requires a bit more effort but Soulseek has been around for years. I build my own music library from P2P or buying on Bandcamp. It all goes on my NAS and I stream it via Plexamp. I have my own library, my fiance’s, a few friend’s on there. I’m pushing 10k albums at this point.
I know I used to have an adblocked version of Spotify on my phone for convenience sake but I think they finally caught on and killed that. The AUR version still works for me however. I haven’t had a Spotify subscription since probably like 2018.
