Artists Can't Fix the Music Industry on Their Own
With Deerhoof's decision to remove their music from Spotify currently doing the discourse rounds, it's worth acknowledging the limits of what one artist—or even a small group of artists—can really do.
Deerhoof are taking their music off Spotify. The long-running indie band announced the news via an Instagram post, and within a matter of hours, a litany of music media outlets had picked up on the story, including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Stereogum, FADER, A.V. Club, Brooklyn Vegan and other places too numerous to list. At first glance, this intense level of press interest may seem strange—plenty of artists have left Spotify over the years, and many of them, like Deerhoof, have publicly and unsparingly criticized the streaming giant on their way out the door. But in the wake of the recent announcement that Prima Materia—an investment firm founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in 2020—was leading a new, €600 million funding round for German drone maker and AI defense company Helsing, a vocal segment of the music world is once again calling attention to not just the financial inequities of the streaming economy, but the apparent moral rot of those who dominate it.
“Once again” might be the most important words in that last sentence, because the streaming landscape—and the conduct of Spotify and Daniel Ek in particular—has been a source of near-constant criticism for nearly a decade now. For anyone who’s been paying even a modicum of attention to music industry discourse, the “Spotify is actually bad” narrative long ago ceased to be breaking news, and has in many ways became a sort of given, much in the same way that Amazon and other corporate behemoths are, despite their ubiquity and profitability, widely thought to be malevolent entities. That normalization is perhaps why Ek, who in the past at least made an effort to portray himself as a well-meaning figure and a genuine lover of music, now appears to be engaging in a proper heel turn, casually brushing off his critics while publicly dismissing the threat of a potential Spotify boycott. His rationale? Because he’s “100% convinced” that sinking hundreds of millions of euros into AI battle technology is “the right thing for Europe.”
Ek clearly believes in himself and his vision for the future, and considering that Spotify not only logged its first-ever profitable year in 2024, but also saw its stock price reach a new all-time high just last week—in the midst of backlash to the Helsing announcement, no less—it makes sense that the guy is feeling somewhat untouchable. Despite being loathed by a sizable percentage of the music sphere, he during the first quarter of 2025 saw Spotify’s global tally of monthly active users reach 678 million—a 10% increase from the year prior—as the company’s revenue hit €4.2 billion, a 16% jump. The empire he built not only isn’t in trouble, it’s expanding, and Ek has become wildly rich in the process; aside from the billions in Spotify stock that he currently holds, he’s also cashed out more than $800 million since 2023, presumably to help fund projects like Prima Materia and its investments into the battlefields of the future.
This is Bond villain behavior, and although Ek’s investments into military tech actually date back to 2021, it says a lot about his character that he’s now “doubling down” (his words) during a time when the horrifically destructive possibilities of drone and surveillance technology are being actively showcased in places like Gaza and Ukraine. And considering that Spotify, as Deerhoof stated yesterday, “only pays a pittance anyway,” it’s no wonder that the band decided that they’d finally had enough.
Quoting further from their statement:
The big picture is this: Our politico-economic system increasingly presents humanity with a hideous fait accompli: Buy from me, vote for me, consume my media, use my service. Yes, it means mass deportation, mass detainment, and mass extermination of those deemed unprofitable by a handful of rich white people living in enclaves protected by AI weaponry. But if you don’t, you cannot have a job. We think this dilemma is coming to a head soon, and we predict that most people aren’t going to take the billionaires’ side.
Of course music journalists—who, like independent musicians, have seen their profession ravaged by corporate consolidation and the “disruptions” provided by various tech platforms—would be excited by this sort of message. (On a more cynical level, smart editors also know that publishing pretty much any content that involves righteous anger is a surefire way to stoke online engagement, which is arguably the only media metric that truly matters these days.) Yet praise for Deerhoof wasn’t limited to journos and punters with no real skin in the game; even Joyful Noise, which has been the group’s primary label home since 2017, put out its own statement of support, saying that it feels “sickened” by the fact that thanks to Spotify, its releases “have inadvertently contributed to the global war machine.”
A little later in that statement, however, Joyful Noise added the following paragraph:
As an independent record label, we serve the artist. It is ultimately their decision to present their material on whichever platforms they choose. It is with this in mind that we hold no judgement towards any artist that wishes to keep their music on the platform.
It’s a reasonable enough sentiment, and one that actually echoes the words of Deerhoof themselves, who stated that they “don't judge those who can’t make the same move [away from Spotify] in the short term.” Unfortunately though, this laissez-faire, “let people make their own choices” attitude is also a major reason why the drive to reform the streaming economy—and, more generally, the problematic and exploitative practices that define much of the modern music industry—rarely seems to gain much traction.