King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard made headlines two weeks ago when they announced they would be joining the wave of artists removing their music from Spotify due to the CEO's investments in military technology powered by AI.
It came to light in recent weeks that CEO Daniel Ek had invested over $1.07 billion in Helsing – a German company that specializes in AI military technology – that Ek is also a chairman of. He reportedly joined the board of Helsing back in 2021 when he originally invested over $116 billion in the company, which was at the time in its infancy.
When the news broke, several artists announced they would no longer offer their music on Spotify such Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, the Kalahari Oyster Cult record label, and Dr. Sure's Unusual Practice, as well as King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard.
The Australian experimental band posted to their Instagram stories on the 26th of July,
"Hello friends,
A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek 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."
Broadcasted to over 580k followers, King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard said that "New demos collection out everywhere except Spotify (fuck Spotify)," which obviously caught the eye of mainstream publications looking to report on the news. When having a chat with the Los Angeles Times, frontman Stu Mackenzie provided more context to the band's decision.
When asked about his initial reaction to Ek's investments, Mackenzie said that he was shocked, but then later felt that he:
"shouldn't be shocked. We’ve been saying f— Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented. We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought “I don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now.” I don’t really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing. But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about."
Staff writer August Brown followed up with the question about whether or not it was difficult for the band to decide to leave Spotify, to which Mackenzie highlighted that while their most recent record, and previous catalogue, would be less accessible due to the move, it was the right thing to do:
"The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people. But sometimes you’ve just got to say, “Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now.” In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship.
As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that, because that’s not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes. I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that. In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I’m just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us."
All of this comes after the recent discussions about how little artists make from streaming, with Spotify paying an artist between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, and Ditto reports that only tracks with at least 1,000 streams within twelve months "generate royalties." And, that doesn't guarantee the artist sees the money – it's paid out to the publisher and master recording owners.
King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard's most recent release, Phantom Island, was praised for its newfound use of orchestration, and released on the 13th of June. You can find the record on Bandcamp and Apple Music here, or a new personal favorite streaming service, Qobuz (pays approximately $0.20 per stream).
