It’s almost time for Spotify Wrapped, the annual gift the music streaming service gives its listeners that documents their listening habits over the past year. Most of us look forward each year to seeing who our most listened to artist was, which song spent more time in our ears, and which genre we couldn’t stop exploring.
Did you know that all those hours spent listening to Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter, or Turnstile is paying for military strike drones and the A.I. weapons systems that operate them?
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek received backlash in June for lining his pockets as well as those of the people at Helsing, a Military A.I. controlled weapons manufacturer, with money generated from the hours you spend listening to music on his streaming service.
Through his company Prima Materia, Ek invested 600 million Euros into Helsing, becoming the weapons developer’s largest shareholder. This in addition to his initial investment of 100 million Euros in 2021.
That’s about $821 million American dollars to make software used in the HX-2 Strike Drone, or the underwater SG-1 Fathom drone.
Spotify has nearly 700 million active listeners, making for close to a dollar per listener used for producing weapons of war.
Bands on Spotify can’t even get a fraction of that much money out of Ek for making the music he’s using to support drone strikes.
Someone of this much importance to the music industry, like Ek, should be a little more considerate with his actions, especially considering the number of active listeners his platform services across the globe, including in war torn areas like Ukraine and Gaza.
Yes, this is Ek’s money, and yes he can do whatever he wants with his money, but knowing there are people who use his platform to listen to music as an escape, as a way to relax and get away from the problems of the world makes this tough to accept.
How can we escape from these problems once we become aware that our listening habits are contributing to them? People living in countries experiencing constant war are right now using this app for joy and hope, not knowing that the person responsible for their momentary joy is using their hope to bring about more destruction and despair.
Dozens of artists have removed their music from Spotify due to Ek’s actions. This includes electronic music pioneers Massive Attack, Australian psych-rock act King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, indie rockers Deerhoof, emo band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and others.
Honestly, I think others should follow.
It isn’t okay to use the money he makes off of artists’ hard work, passion, and time to invest into something so obviously wrong.
I don’t think that artists should continue lining Daniel Ek’s pockets with their music. Should we?