Deepening the Grooves: finding an alternative to Spotify

A mass-exodus from Spotify was launched over the summer. The usual culprit of artists' renewed call for their community to jump ship from the streaming service is none other than Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. The boycott was sparked by Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia leading a round of funding in Helsing, a German defence tech group focusing on AI software development in military technology. Ek dumped a whopping 600 million euros into the war machine fuelling Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Also wrapped up in artists' and Spotify subscribers' outrage over Ek’s capital investment is that over the last two decades he has become a billionaire off the backs of artists' music through his company’s royalty distribution system that has only paid independent artists pennies per stream. Duetti, a company that works with independent artists to manage and market their catalogue to streaming services, published a 2024 Economics Report that found Spotify pays artists a meagre $3 USD per 1,000 Streams.

Even though I spent the whole summer being told helpful tricks to ditch Spotify, I still haven’t. It’s quite hypocritical. Unfortunately the convenience of streaming has made it difficult to decide how to supplement all the time I spend listening to music on Spotify. I do have a sizeable collection of physical media: vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs, which is an obvious alternative to streaming music on Spotify. Outrageously, the ease streaming creates means a lot of my physical media is more untouched than it should be.

Streaming and playlist culture do feel to be an inorganic way to listen to music. To move past the need for Spotify it seems to be time to rethink the way I approach listening to music. Since most of my music-loving life I’ve been a playlist person, it seems remarkably difficult to part with all of my favourite tunes in these folders of convenience. I do feel artistically ready to partly abandon the playlist and revert to the tried and true habit of listening to albums. It was a huge summer of album listening for me. Blondshell’s new record, If You Asked For a Picture, The Bug Club’s Very Human Features, and Adult Mom’s spring release, Natural Causes, have been replayed so much that had I been listening to them on vinyl the grooves would be insanely deep after the past few months.

Instead of only listening to albums this summer though, I’ve also created playlists – like a normal Gen Zer – with a couple songs I enjoy from an album and other singles. But I’ve found over the past few months that this way of listening to music consistently falls flat; I’d listen to the playlist three times and then get sick of the tunes. Then all I had to do to fall back in love with those songs was listen to the record they’re on and the spark was back.

Illustration: Paul D'Orlando.

The decisively more important reason to rethink my music listening habits is the political intent behind boycotting Spotify. If I don’t migrate off the platform, Ek will continue to profit from the monthly fee paid to stream songs artists aren’t adequately paid for. Furthermore, when his next weapons manufacturer of choice has their next funding round I’ll be complicit in his ability to fund military technologies. This is a concern local independent artists also have with their music continuing to stream on Spotify after his investment in Helsing this past June. 

Without artists' music streaming on Spotify the corporation's exploitative business model could completely crumble. With both customers and artists joining the boycott of Spotify, the movement has the possibility to reshape the economic landscape streaming services have profited from for two decades. International and local artists have left Spotify in droves due to the horror of Ek’s investment in military technology. Premium consumers and freebie streamers who haven’t cancelled their subscriptions over the CEO’s investments may be forced to when none of their favourite music is available to stream on Spotify.

In conversations with independent Scotland-based artists it’s clear that Ek’s investment in Helsing was a shocking misuse of funds with disastrous political and humanitarian ramifications. They’re also keenly aware that without the collection of music that the platform profits off from independent artists their business model would be obsolete. Neil Pennycook, aka Meursault, told me about how Ek’s venture capital firm’s last round of investments has made it impossible to “support a company that can gleefully and without shame, contribute so substantially to the death and suffering of so many regular, flesh and blood, non-billionaire humans.” 

Artists joining the boycott know that leaving is much more complicated than clicking a button. Having alerted the company that distributes their music to streaming services or those managing the business side of their career that they’re considering leaving Spotify, artists are routinely met with a hostile response. “One of the first things a label or a publisher will tell an artist looking to leave Spotify is that it makes up a large percentage of their digital revenue,” says Pennycook. Meursault currently has 8,153 monthly listeners on Spotify. “The total sum isn’t exactly putting anyone’s kids through college,” Pennycook states. Therefore, he feels leaving Spotify is “a fairly ‘low risk’ move.”

Independent artists are also Spotify customers. Along with weighing the decision to pull their discography off the platform they’re also thinking about how to proceed as consumers. Grant Donaldson of Glaswegian bands Moni Jitchell and Civil Elegies is in that boat. He shared that “apart from the pitiful amounts that are paid in revenue to artists per stream – or arguably the worst sound quality out of any of the main streaming sites – the investment of the profits by the CEO to fund the production of AI weaponry would be the main reason for myself wanting to leave Spotify.” The reasons behind artists and customers alike joining the boycott of Spotify seem to ring true for more and more people.

Illustration: Paul D'Orlando. 

Another independent artist considering removing her music from Spotify is Josephine Sillars. She’s been reckoning with Spotify’s unethical royalty practice for years and now the horror that Sillars would be complicit in Ek’s investments in AI military technologies unless she decides to change her relationship with the platform. “Regardless of if I pull my current discography, I am currently looking into alternative release models and platforms for future releases," she explains. "I don’t feel comfortable at the moment putting anything new on Spotify.” Thankfully there’s an alternative artist cooperative brewing called Subvert. The platform could fill the ethical gap independent artists are stuck on when they’re ready to release new music.

Subvert is an online cooperative marketplace set to launch this autumn. The platform's goal is to be the artist-owned successor to Bandcamp, which started as an independent music e-commerce platform. Since its founding, Bandcamp has been sold twice from one corporation to the next. In contrast to Bandcamp, as of late August Subvert is collectively owned by 5587 artists, 998 labels and 862 supporters. The online marketplace will create a system for artists to own their means of production by releasing music directly to their fans.

Before Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration Spotify hosted a brunch as a means to brag about “the power of podcasts in this election” as reported by Bloomberg. Nikki Belfiglio is a member of New York City bands BODEGA and NODEGA and was outraged by this Spotify event. She told me: “In January, watching the tech assholes simp and smile behind [Trump], a blatantly corrupt sexual abuser enraged me to think, what else? With a few simple questions, asking around to friends I was linked to Subvert.” It’s insidious that artists have been exploited by streaming service corporations and their executives for decades. Instead of streaming music on Spotify or other corporate streaming services, Subvert could offer a cooperative alternative for fans to buy records as both MP4 files and different types of physical media directly from their favourite independent artists.

When I started working on this feature, a callout for local artists looking to leave Spotify showed an overwhelming want for change in the way they’re able to make their music available to fans on the internet. Those who reached out included Yemeni musician Intibint, cross-genre artist Beth Karp, DJ and producer naafi, Stephen McLeod, aka allmyfriendsaresynths, plus singer-songwriters Kohla and Grayling among many others.

Spotify’s decades of exploitation, coupled with the CEO’s unethical investments in Helsing has caused an international tidal wave of artists standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and other people living under the boot of empire, imperial wars and genocide by boycotting the platform. Over the last few weeks King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Hotline TNT and Xiu Xiu have all pulled their music from the platform to join the boycott. As of September I’ll be joining the Spotify boycott too and hope that in turn all the records in my collection will have their grooves deepened from proper use.