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.
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“Said one user on X.”
Dude, you should have stopped using Spotify when they let Joe Rogan on their platform… or when they started hosting fake music.
Or because they pay artist way less than any one else, while having lower quality audio.
I thought we were already boycotting this shit
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 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.
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’m learning more and more everyday, that essentially all companies worldwide are evil. Because profit and money are what is most important to humans, I 100% want all of humanity to self-terminate and give this planet back to the few species that we didn’t already wipe out! We are a nightmare species. I fear humans more than anything else in life. We are the enemy of this planet.
It is theorized by anthropologists that for most of humanity’s existence (almost 200,000 years), humans operated on gift economies, without keeping any ledgers or IOUs, and also not bartering.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
Humanity mostly beat out (kind of, not really, humans mated/bred with neanderthals) neanderthals as a species in evolution because humans cooperated with each other, whereas neanderthals were more individualistic (also not a universal truth).
Greed and profit seeking are a direct result of forming massive civilizations with defined leaders and the possibility to gain power over other people. There are ideas for new economic systems that will eliminate this hierarchal structure, namely anarchism and some other socialist idiologies like forcing all corporations to be worker-owned coops (not all of them).
Seeking profit above all else isn’t human nature. Humans have lived and still live in societies that don’t do this. The socioeconomic system that we find ourselves in currently in a large part of the world does put profit above all else. But this system is just one iteration of how we live. And even it has changed over time where it has gotten worse over the last 50 years. It too would change and likely be replaced by another in the long run. Many believe that would be some form of socialism. Or we could go largely extinct before we abandon it. A better world is possible though.
Great idea! You first, I’ll totally be right behind
It is a great idea. And perhaps you are so disturbed as to reply with this snarkyness, because deep down you know it to be true. We are the ultimate creeping Mold on this rotting ball of hot sewage. We did this to the planet. Fuck humans, we all need to go extinct.
Totally agree. Just have someone let me know when you’ve done it. Maybe we could set up a chain or something. You start, have someone that knows notify me, and then I notify the next person.
Now go on and start the change you want to see 🌠
Fuck both y’all, I don’t want to go extinct and it’s fucked up to try and get someone to die. Go touch grass both of you. The planet is going to be fine, it’s a giant rock in the middle of space, life will continue regardless of how bad we fuck it up, life exists in sulfuric lakes for fucks sake. Humans are cool as fuck, we turned rocks and metals into magical devices we can use to be edgelord douchebags on the internet.
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!
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.
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.
Always worth keeping in mind that these fuckers are selling snake oil to one another under the guise of national security.
This technology is dangerous not because it works as advertised but because it creates a vacuum of responsibility for when the very manual killing starts
Israel’s Lavender AI is a great example of this in action. It doesn’t work in any meaningful way. All it does is label casualties in a bombing run as “terrorists” after the fact.
Helsing supplies Ukraine which is defending itself in accord with international law and the UN Charter. An attacked nation defending itself against Russian aggression. Nothing wrong with that. Basically the opposite of Russian Z-fascism.
Yeah, it seems they also didn’t mention that it’s a European defense company, not a US defense company.
Europe is investing a lot into defense now and it’s actually a good thing that they’re moving away from dependence on the US defense industrial complex.
Spotify sucks tho. But that’s a separate thing.
Clickbait article.
A lot of money being invested in Euro defense right now.
I empathize with the sentiment and agree with the argument that Europe should invest in its own defense infrastructure, particularly if Putin is gearing up to make a move.
That being said, Im increasingly wary of Europe’s willingness to appease Trump, and find it probable that, if right-wing parties continue making political gains, this same infrastructure will be turned against marginalized communities in these same countries; in a similar vein to the U.S regime’s attacks against immigrants and dissenters.
Again, I’m not opposed to re-armament, but I hope EU citizens exercise more vigilance and skepticism in this era of resurging nationalism and protectionism.
Everyone knows what Trump is. Trump is demanding an increase in military spending with the expectation that the money will go to the US. He’s basically demanding tribute.
Saying “sure we’ll spend more on defense” while spending on our own defense industry is calling his bluff while also getting ready for if and when he starts using the US military to bully allies.
Nobody else in the world needs to be lectured about the problems with the US military industrial complex. We know.
Sharing my thoughts isnt lecturing. Sit down and stop being condescending.
“Sit down and stop being condescending.” – someone that doesn’t lecture people
It is possible to get off Spotify.
What you can’t buy legitimately via other means you can use a Youtube-To-MP3 converter to rip and add the file to your music library.
You’re saving an already low-quality stream into a lossy format. Just use Soulseek.
Don’t have high end audio equipment anyway, I can’t tell the difference on 99% of songs.
We all know that scene in Robo Cop 2 is going to happen eventually.
Reading this while listening to vinyl…best enjoyable music experience.
To hell with the enshitification of music streaming.
