Australia's King Gizzard Leaves Spotify

Acclaimed, prolific, and self-described weirdo's King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard recently announced that they had decided to pull their entire catalogue from Spotify, including all 27 studio LPs. King Gizzard have never been shy about their environmental activism or leftist politics-- including advocating for consumer and artist rights. Back in 2022, the band joined Neil Young in protesting the streaming platform's ongoing partnership with Joe Rogan due to the rampant COVID-19 misinformation present on his podcast.

And now, once again, numerous artists have come forward to boycott Spotify, this time for CEO Daniel Ek's investment and association with AI military drone technology for the defense company Helsing. KGLW were preceded by experimental rock act Xiu-Xiu, among others who have fled the platform.

Spotify has had a long history of questionable business practices and anti-consumer, anti-artist sentiments. Most recently, the platform has been in hot water over the increasing quantity of AI music being promoted on some of their most popular playlists. Famously, the band The Velvet Sundown was outed as an AI creation after receiving over a million streams on the platform.

With Spotify taking top-billing paying artists on their platform the least per-stream, associating with alt-right media personalities, promoting and replacing real artists with AI-generated slop, and now having a CEO who's invested hundreds of millions in military technology-- maybe this avalanche of grievances can finally begin to eat at the company's stranglehold on the music industry. But honestly? I wouldn't bet on it.

You can find King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's music on most other streaming platforms. And on top of their proclivity for social consciousness, they also have a favourable history with bootleg culture, and on Bandcamp you can find their collection of "name your price" demo compilations, including the just released Demos Vol. 7 + Vol. 8.