David Bridie

Spotify pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. This is insulting and completely unsustainable. But leaving Spotify is about more than the money. Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, recently led a €600m ($1.07bn) investment in a German defence company called Helsing, which specialises in AI-driven autonomous weapon systems, through his investment firm Prima Materia. Ek isn’t paid a salary by Spotify – he takes a share of its stock, last year alone cashing out a reported $345m. So here we are, artists helping to build algorithms to sell our music – & the success of that algorithm determines the flow of wealth to a man who invests in building machines that could kill people. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the horror of AI drone wars in Ukraine & Gaza – children killed and hospitals destroyed with the press of the space bar. Ek is investing in technology that can cause suffering and death. Spotify used to seem like a necessary evil. By association, it now just seems evil. So like many others I am removing my music from the platform. This won’t make any significant dent in the company’s profits. It won’t change my earnings much either, but I can no longer be complicit. I don’t want my songs – some written with survivors of conflict – to enrich a man who helps fund weapons. And I am urging everyone else to quit Spotify. Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/31/spotify-musicians-david-bridie-ntwnfb