ALBAWABA - 'Death to Spotify,' a new DIY movement that erupted this month, is urging music fans and artists to boycott the streaming service due to ethical concerns.
An event by the same name was recently held in Oakland, California, and featured music industry veterans who discussed the issue at hand. Many people have been calling for a Spotify boycott in response to its poor pay for artists, and CEO Daniel Ek's recent $700 million investment in Helsing, a German company that specializes in the development of AI military equipment.
Additionally, other Spotify users unsubscribed to the service after claiming that it had been heavily "pushing" AI-generated music at them. Over recent years, the music streaming service has witnessed a rise in AI-generated content from artists and bands that never existed, which many found concerning.
Some of these AI-generated artists have hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners.
This prompted bands like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Massive Attack, and many more to take down their music from Spotify.
'Death to Spotify': Boycott calls erupt again
Daniel Ek, CEO of Swedish music streaming service Spotify, gestures as he makes a speech at a press conference in Tokyo on September 29, 2016. Spotify kicked off its services in Japan on September 29. (Photo by TORU YAMANAKA / AFP)
According to The Guardian, in response to Liz Pelly's book 'Mood Machine,' a complaints investigator in Oakland named Stephanie Dukich was inspired upon hearing about the boycott.
She said, "Spotify is enmeshed in how we engage with music," and added, "We thought it would be great to talk about our relationship to streaming – what it means to actually take our files off and learn how to do that together," which caused the creation of the Death to Spotify DIY movement.
Dukich said that the goal is "down with algorithmic listening, down with royalty theft, down with AI-generated music," stating further that listeners are as responsible as artists.
She outlined how not having access to all that music will make listeners think harder about which artists to support. Despite all the boycott calls, Spotify remains the most popular music streaming platform with over 696 million monthly active users, 276 million of whom pay for its premium version.
