is a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a reporter at Bloomberg.
On Monday, the long-running indie rock band Deerhoof made an announcement: it was pulling its music from Spotify.
The impetus was Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s newest investment in Helsing, the German defense group that makes AI and drones. Helsing raised 600 million euros in its most recent funding round, which was led by Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia. “Helsing is benefiting from a surge of investment in defence groups, as a highly charged geopolitical environment spurs nations all over the world to increase military spending and the war in Ukraine triggers a rethink of battlefield technology,” the Financial Times wrote of the investment. Ek characterized the investment as “doubling down”; he’d previously made Prima Materia’s first investment in Helsing.
That didn’t sit right with the members of Deerhoof, who didn’t like Spotify much to begin with. The streaming platform has been criticized by artists for not paying enough, as well as for its practices around “ghost artists” and Discovery Mode. I called up Greg Saunier, Deerhoof’s drummer, to talk about how streaming supports war efforts, how much money the band made from Spotify, and where they drew the moral line.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Let’s start with how you made the decision. Your statement reads that you saw that Daniel Ek was using his Spotify money to invest in AI, and you objected to war profiteering. I think that refers to Ek’s investment in Helsing. Can you sort of give me a picture of how that decision went after you heard the news?
We were in a rented minivan, on tour in the Northeast, and so I think we were just making chitchat in the car. And I was just like, “Hey, did you guys see that latest headline?” I think it took the four members of Deerhoof maybe all of two minutes to decide.
Ed Rodriguez, our guitar player, did a quick look at our Spotify numbers. How much do each of us actually make a year from being on Spotify? As far as direct income, it was something small, like maybe $1,000 a year or something for each of us.
“The band’s decision was very easy and quick.”
So this is our cue. We’ve been basically waiting for at least five years for a moment. Everybody already hates Spotify — everyone you talk to, whether they’re a musician or whether they’re a listener. And so we were hoping that somebody would organize a movement. We’d be the first to sign up. But that wasn’t particularly happening. And so just for our own ability to sleep at night, you know — regardless of whether it creates any movement, regardless of whether Spotify themselves care — we just for our own mental health did not want our music, and particularly our music success, to be funding AI battle tech.
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