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.
Highly illegal.
It’s legal through a US subsidiary if the funds come from US operations. The morality is questionable though
Been off Spotify since they have Rogan his platform, which contributed to Trump also.
thats when i cancelled as well. this guy seems like such a fucknut
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Same, took some legwork to get files for my 700-song library, but we did it. Fuck 'em.
“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?.
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?
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.
Spotify CEO also donated millions to trump campaign.
What are the Spotify alternatives people recommend?
IIRC Tidal and Qobuz should be good alternatives
Qoobuz had the most horrific app I’ve ever experienced.
Couldn’t even search a song in a playlist bad.
Thanks.
I was talking to my wife this morning about this thread and the Qobuz recommendation was just what she needed to replace and cancel Spotify. She was able to import her playlists from her Spotify account and she’s been commenting for the past couple hours about how much better the audio quality is.
Tidal is cheaper and better quality, Deezer is good, too.
Qobuz is great. It’s a french company, they pay the artists well and the music is in high quality
Napster, bearshare
Qobuz
This is where I’d have recommended deezer, but they shit the bed on their mobile app.
+1 for tidal
Funkwhale
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.
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.
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.
The best time to start boycotting was when they started platforming a conspiracy theorising, testicle headed manosphere peddler. The next best time is not I suppose.
You’re way to late then too. The perfect time to act on this was back in Iraq with that prince dick head with xi.
Also we all should have taken a harder stance at celebrity using these private security companies. Drake’s in Toronto blocking roads so he can get all 16 armored cars on to the 401.
Lots of people really defend the stuff by saying “look how much money they bring to the city, we can ignore it” but at the end of the day, it’s growing a new industry. I don’t get why we don’t call it out more like these fucks need to wait in traffic like the rest of us. I don’t care who they are or how much money they make. Roads are a public space and shared by everyone equally.
Out of every company I would have never expected Spotify to be one of the ones to want that
Who’s calling for that boycott? Putin?
Respect for the true pacifists out there, but investing in EU-based defense industry is hardly questionable by ordinary standards.
Europe used the specter of Russia to justify it’s dive into militant fascism the last time too.
False. Western Europe increased arms spending in response to German aggression. Germany increased arms spending… well.
Germany, famously not part of Europe.
Germany increased arms spending… well.
Well what? The specter of Russia was a huge part of how Germany justified it’s fascism.
Just like now.
False.
Germany built up it’s army in preparation for attacking the rest of Europe. Adults usually know this. Sorry if I have misjudged your age.
Germany and Soviet Russia were allies and cooperated in the attack on Poland. This only fell apart when Hitler betrayed Stalin by invading the Soviet Union.
It is said that in all his life, Stalin only ever trusted one person: Adolf Hitler. When German communists conscripted into the Wehrmacht defected in the night before the attack, to bring warning to the Soviet Union, Stalin had them shot. The last supply train carrying grain for Nazi Germany crossed the border less than 2 hours before the launch.
It is said that in all his life, Stalin only ever trusted one person: Adolf Hitler.
It must be so easy being a right winger: you can just make up any old bullshit off the top of your head and apparently people will believe you.
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.
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…
it will always be and has always been about money
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.
I’m doing my part!
