Trip-hop legends Massive Attack will not make their new music available on Spotify. Next year, the English collective will begin releasing music on a new label, and while it will be available digitally, it will not appear on Spotify.
A couple of months ago, Massive Attack announced that they were joining a wave of artists removing their catalogues from Spotify, citing CEO Daniel Ek’s investment of around $700 million in the AI military start-up Helsing. The collective wrote at the time: “The economic burden that has long been placed on artists is now compounded by a moral and ethical burden, whereby the hard-earned money of fans and the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately funds lethal, dystopian technologies.”
The streaming service earlier said through its Instagram account
@SpotifyforArtists: “Spotify and Helsing are two totally separate companies. And while I can’t speak for Helsing, I’m well aware they’re not involved in Gaza. I know because I had the same questions myself, and asked. Helsing’s efforts are focused on Europe defending itself in Ukraine.”
In September, Ek announced that he will step down as CEO on 1 January, with Spotify co-presidents Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström set to take his place. Since Ek founded Spotify about two decades ago, the music-streaming service has transformed the music business. It has over 700 million monthly active users and 281 million paying subscribers across 184 markets. The service offers a library of more than 100 million songs, 7 million podcast titles, and 350,000 audiobooks.
Like Massive Attack, several other artistes have made similar moves to remove their work from Spotify this year, including King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Wu Lyf, Xiu Xiu, and The Sabres of Paradise.