King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard‘s frontman Stu Mackenzie has commented on the band’s recent withdrawal from Spotify.
Late last month, the Australian band announced that they would be pulling their music from the streaming platform over founder Daniel Ek funding the Helsing corporation.
Ek co-founded an investment company Prima Materia, which invested over €600million in Helsing, a Munich-based company creating drones and artificial intelligence for military operations, per the Financial Times.
At the time, the band wrote on social media: “Hello friends. A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology. We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.”
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard CREDIT: Maclay Heriot
Now, frontman Stu Mackenzie has spoken to the LA Times about their exit from Spotify. When asked about his initial reaction to finding out about Ek investing in military drone tech, Stu said: “A bit of shock, and then feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked. We’ve been saying fuck Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented.”
He went on to explain that while he doesn’t “really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing,” the band “don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now”. “But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.”
On how he felt about making the decision, Mackenzie explained: “The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people.”
When asked whether he thinks Ek or Spotify care about King Gizzard leaving the platform, Mackenzie replied: “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we’ve released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together. I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you’ll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive… Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.”
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. CREDIT: Jason Galea.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard join Xiu Xiu, who also recently announced that they are in the process of removing their music from the platform over Ek’s “investment in AI war drones”, and Deerhoof, who pulled their catalogue from the streamer for the same reason, stating: “We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech,” Deerhoof said in a statement.
In recent years, people have been divided about streaming platforms and their impact on the music industry. In 2024, for example, Ek sparked backlash for his comments relating to the cost of “creating content”, with countless users and musicians describing him as “out of touch”.
Ek later walked back on his comments, explaining in an apology that he had no intention of dismissing the struggles faced by musicians and using the “reductive” label of “content”. The negative response to this was heightened as, around the same time, it was confirmed that Spotify had made profits of over €1billion (£860m), following staff being laid off and subscription prices rising.
Earlier this year, Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth criticised the platform, saying he “owes it” to other musicians not to have an account, while Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante described streaming as the place “where music goes to die” last November.
The streaming platform also received criticism after it officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1,000 streams – making it harder for artists to generate royalties from their music and restricting new artists looking to crack the music industry.
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