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.
I boycotted them a long time ago when I found out they donated to Trump’s campaign, despite being a Swedish company.
Wow didn’t know that.
I also newly started boycotting them for the same reasons. Plus they don’t give enough to the musicians, and support AI music.
Been off Spotify since they have Rogan his platform, which contributed to Trump also.
Not to mention giving 100s of millions of dollars to fund Joe Rogan and his extreme right-wing propaganda.
Highly illegal.
It’s legal through a US subsidiary if the funds come from US operations. The morality is questionable though
when due process is completely ignored, then you can be pretty sure that “legal” has no meaning anymore. especially seeing as how the people who are supposed to be enforcing these “laws” are the ones who are ignoring them
Honey this is America, anything is legal if you got the money
Spotify CEO also donated millions to trump campaign.
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.
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.
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.
Been thinking of booting them for a whilst. Just cancelled. Better late than never.
Yeah - been talking about doing so for quite a long time, and then signing up to a Qobuz family plan, downloading all their apps, and cancelling everything Spotify has taken all of five minutes. Hardly even interrupted the album we were listening to via Chromecast. There’s a lesson to be learned somewhere.
Qobuz’ recommendations and albums-of-the-week actually look good, too. Like an actual music enthusiast has picked things out, rather than Spotify’s slop.
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.
damn people are just learning that spotify is a shitty pro fascist/pro white supremacist company?
Out of every company I would have never expected Spotify to be one of the ones to want that
What are the Spotify alternatives people recommend?
I jumped to Tidal many years ago because Spotify could not be bothered to provide high quality output. Yes, you can ear the difference, even on shitty gear.
For the stuff I could not get on either platform I started buying CDs on Discogs and ripping them to FLAC.
Edit: ear, not eat.
If you’re technically inclined, self-host navidrome or jellyfin.
If you just want music and don’t care about the streaming part, bandcamp (although it does have some basic streaming I believe).
If you want streaming and aren’t technically inclined, Tidal.
This is where I’d have recommended deezer, but they shit the bed on their mobile app.
+1 for tidal
Apple music believe it or not. Nice selection and interface. Works on Apple devices as well as android. Has a high bitrate and supports aptx on android. Don’t think they have a native app for windows or Linux, though, so you’d have to use the web version.
“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.
You shouldn’t be “paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago” regardless of anything an executive has done. Be less lazy and cancel subscriptions to shitty services.
Also, if a CEO doing a bad thing is a dealbreaker for them, why the fuck are they on twitter?.
I think one of the most toxic things on Lemmy is the prevalence of judging normies for using incredibly popular services and ascribing it to a character defect instead of life just being too complex for most people to be able to prioritize exploring more ethical technology choices.
You’re not wrong. There are lots of holier-than-thou types around here.
😎 If you’re not compiling your own kernel 🏋🏼♂️ you’re missing out on substantial gains 💪🏼. Just drink a little Nix shake in the morning 🤙🏼, then hit your favorite systemd alternative GitHub pages and pull the nightly 🤘🏼. You’ll be so swole bro, you’ll be Godify. 🎶
No… It’s just laziness let’s not sugar coat it. You have the wealth of human knowledge in your pocket, knowledge of how to do absolutely anything and everything for free on a silver platter, all you have to do is prioritize exploring ethical technology choices. Complexity of the problem itself is not a good excuse to not learning to solve it as it continues to become a bigger problem.
Agreed, most comments are miserable, toxic, old man yells at cloud, energy. More and more, so.
I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not like there aren’t multiple obvious alternatives (and not just on the fediverse). And someone being clued in enough to boycott Spotify should have no trouble finding those alternatives. Additionally, the platform being owned by an outright Nazi should give even the most out of touch people pause.
But agreed that people could stand to be a bit more tactful about it and not immediately go on the attack.
Additionally, the platform being owned by an outright Nazi should give even the most out of touch people pause.
How is Daniel Ek a nazi? That’s a wild take if I’ve ever heard one.
I thought it was clear from context I was talking about X.
Be less lazy
“Damn this sucks, I’m doing the thing”
“Hey you lazy stupid fuck, go back in time and do it sooner”
Why is the Internet like this?
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’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.
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 🌠
