this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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Spotify, the world’s leading music streaming platform, is facing intense criticism and boycott calls following CEO Daniel Ek’s announcement of a €600m ($702m) investment in Helsing, a German defence startup specialising in AI-powered combat drones and military software.

The move, announced on 17 June, has sparked widespread outrage from musicians, activists and social media users who accuse Ek of funnelling profits from music streaming into the military industry.

Many have started calling on users to cancel their subscriptions to the service.

“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.

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[–] suddenlyme@lemmy.zip 3 points 14 hours ago

I thought we were already boycotting this shit

[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 12 points 21 hours ago

Funny enough, for local downloads of video game OSTs (which I like way too much), I've been recently turning to Steam of all things. Often cheaper than Bandcamp and DRM-free!

[–] rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

What's up with the cool startup names recently? First Palantir the fortune teller ball, now Helsing the vampire hunter? Fuck yeah, who doesn't invest in these? /s

[–] Ledericas@lemm.ee 4 points 10 hours ago

thiel has an obsession with lotr, so he named all his evil companies after various lotr themes.

[–] BigBenis@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I stopped using Spotify long ago because of their shitty business practices. Producing a product they killed support for within just a couple years without reimbursing customers and producing huge amounts of e-waste. Jacking their subscription prices twice in one year. Apparently, they also donated to Trump despite not being an American company?? That's to say nothing of their shitty recommendation algorithm, which just plays your most played tracks over and over. Good riddance.

For those interested, I use Tidal now. I'm satisfied with, their recommendation algo is fine and the higher quality streaming is really nice but nothing I've used has ever been as good as Google Play Music, I found so much good music though that service and could upload whatever I was missing. Once Tidal inevitably pisses me off, I'm going to move on to self hosting.

[–] kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 18 hours ago

Being able to upload to Google Play Music was such a great feature. Honestly though, maybe it's best that they killed it when they did. That way it can live on in memory as the example of what a music streaming service should be like... instead of becoming an enshittified zombie like spotify is today.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 3 points 19 hours ago

I can't speak for how viable it is for success or whether it's just a grift (as I haven't had the time to really research into it) but feels like as good a time as any to mention that, out in Australia, The Pack Music Cooperative is fundraising for a cooperative music streaming service: https://www.thepackaustralia.com.au/

They haven't raised a lot towards their goal, yet, and could probably use an the help they can get. As a cooperative, they'll side step a lot of the probably problems a corporation like Spotify or Tidal will have and they already are dedicated to prioritizing artists and their rights.

[–] yumyumsmuncher@feddit.uk 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Jokes on them, I moved to CD and love it

[–] AlphaOmega@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

Got 80GB of music on my phone, tried Spotify once, it was all live versions....

damn people are just learning that spotify is a shitty pro fascist/pro white supremacist company?

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago
[–] Balaquina@lemmy.ca 131 points 1 day ago (12 children)

I boycotted them a long time ago when I found out they donated to Trump's campaign, despite being a Swedish company.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

i boycotted them when i found out they streamed drm-protected lock-in music back then, and charged us a subscription for it.

[–] 3abas@lemm.ee 16 points 1 day ago

Been off Spotify since they have Rogan his platform, which contributed to Trump also.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 50 points 1 day ago

Wow didn't know that.

[–] positiveWHAT@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago

I also newly started boycotting them for the same reasons. Plus they don't give enough to the musicians, and support AI music.

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (7 children)

Who's calling for that boycott? Putin?

Respect for the true pacifists out there, but investing in EU-based defense industry is hardly questionable by ordinary standards.

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[–] EstonianGuy@lemm.ee 21 points 1 day ago

Spotify CEO also donated millions to trump campaign.

[–] Cherry@piefed.social 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Been thinking of booting them for a whilst. Just cancelled. Better late than never.

[–] addie@feddit.uk 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah - been talking about doing so for quite a long time, and then signing up to a Qobuz family plan, downloading all their apps, and cancelling everything Spotify has taken all of five minutes. Hardly even interrupted the album we were listening to via Chromecast. There's a lesson to be learned somewhere.

Qobuz' recommendations and albums-of-the-week actually look good, too. Like an actual music enthusiast has picked things out, rather than Spotify's slop.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Same story here. I cancelled Spotify after the whole Trump thing and switched to Qobuz; the whole thing was pretty seamless. I've got to say, the increased quality is actually noticeable and, as you said, the curated selections actually seem to be, well, curated. Also, if you've got a load of playlists on Spotify you want to keep, Qobuz actually provides subscribers with free access to a migartion service that did a superb job.

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[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 50 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.

You shouldn't be "paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago" regardless of anything an executive has done. Be less lazy and cancel subscriptions to shitty services.

Also, if a CEO doing a bad thing is a dealbreaker for them, why the fuck are they on twitter?.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 73 points 1 day ago (12 children)

I think one of the most toxic things on Lemmy is the prevalence of judging normies for using incredibly popular services and ascribing it to a character defect instead of life just being too complex for most people to be able to prioritize exploring more ethical technology choices.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You're not wrong. There are lots of holier-than-thou types around here.

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[–] noobface@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

😎 If you're not compiling your own kernel 🏋🏼‍♂️ you're missing out on substantial gains 💪🏼. Just drink a little Nix shake in the morning 🤙🏼, then hit your favorite systemd alternative GitHub pages and pull the nightly 🤘🏼. You'll be so swole bro, you'll be Godify. 🎶

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 16 points 1 day ago

“Said one user on X.”

[–] hopesdead@startrek.website 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Dude, you should have stopped using Spotify when they let Joe Rogan on their platform… or when they started hosting fake music.

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago

Always worth keeping in mind that these fuckers are selling snake oil to one another under the guise of national security.

This technology is dangerous not because it works as advertised but because it creates a vacuum of responsibility for when the very manual killing starts

Israel's Lavender AI is a great example of this in action. It doesn't work in any meaningful way. All it does is label casualties in a bombing run as "terrorists" after the fact.

[–] atmorous@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Out of every company I would have never expected Spotify to be one of the ones to want that

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