King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have joined an exodus of musicians from Spotify in protest against the music streaming site’s CEO’s links with the defence industry.
“Fuck Spotify,” the prolific Australian psychedelic rock group said in a social media post on Saturday, announcing that a new demo collection of music would only be available on Bandcamp.
The Instagram post by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard announcing they are leaving Spotify. Photograph: Instagram
In another post they said they had “just removed our music from the platform”, though some hours later much of the music was still playable on Spotify.
A spokesperson for the band told Guardian Australia their “entire catalogue will be coming down” but the process “takes time because of the different labels and distributors”.
The band said the move followed Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, leading a €600m ($1.07bn) investment in Helsing, a German defence technology company specialising in AI-driven autonomous combat.
Ek is also chairman of Helsing, having joined the board in 2021 when his investment fund Prima Materia put €100m into the then-startup.
The response from the music industry, which has long had mixed feelings about the significant influence Spotify wields over artists, has been swift.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, famous for their anthem Rattlesnake, wrote on Instagram on Saturday: “New demos collection out everywhere except Spotify (fuck Spotify)”.
They added: “Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in Al military drone technology.
“We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better?”
Pointedly, the band put a musical backing behind their announcement: Bob Dylan’s Masters of War, an anti-war protest song that declares “you that build the death planes … I just want you to know I can see through your masks”.
Californian rock band Xiu Xiu posted on Instagram on Friday that it was working on taking all of its music off “garbage hole violent armageddon portal Spotify”.
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San Francisco indie rockers Deerhoof made the same move at the end of June.
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“We don’t want our music killing people”, the band wrote. “We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.”
Guardian Australia has contacted Helsing and Spotify for comment.