We seem to be experiencing another miniwave of artists leaving Spotify. Hotline TNT, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have all left the controversial yet widely popular music streaming platform within recent days, weeks and months.
The reasons given for their departure all revolve around the same stinking slop bucket of Spotify’s moral turpitude. If profiteering off the labor of musicians with low- and no-pay arrangements wasn’t bad enough, the reinvestment of those profits by Spotify chief executive Daniel Ek into AI-powered military drone technology is just too big of a horse pill for many artists to swallow.
Will the latest wave of Spotify departures stick, and is it part of a larger trend?
I’m old enough to remember Neil Young leaving Spotify in 2022 to protest the platform’s megadeal with podcasting yamhead and charlatan Joe Rogan. The move cost the musician a lot of money. Whatever complaints there are to be made about payouts, a major artist with a music catalog such as Young’s will still take home a sizable chunk of change in streaming royalties at the end of the day.
The principled stand lasted for about two years before Young conceded that the Spotify boycott no longer made sense once the other major streaming platforms started carrying Rogan’s podcast as well. Between dancing with the devil or removing his music from the Internet completely, he chose to dance with the devil. Young returned his music to Spotify in 2024.
The Neil Young episode is a reminder that musicians bring very different moral and economic considerations to questions about how to connect their music with the world. Contrary to the underlying premise of labor organizations such as United Musicians and Allied Workers, which organizes and advocates on behalf of musicians as a bloc, there is not much reason to believe that the minuscule fraction of artists at the upper limit of the earnings curve can be consistently and reliably counted upon to make decisions in conformity with the collective good for musicians, rather than their individual good.
And yet so many questions of moral and economic equity in the music industry get decided by the actions of the Taylor Swifts, Beyoncés and Coldplays of the world.
It’s a discouraging thought for the 99 percent of musicians. But a recent article by Tatiana Cirisano, which examines a shift “from anger to apathy” in artists’ responses to Spotify, might provide mild consolation. In her piece, she argues that moral outrage is only one of a basketful of issues that push artists in a fragmented music industry away from Spotify and toward alternatives that offer comparable services.
While big names such as Neil Young catch our attention, the most important ones for predicting the future of music might be the names we’ve never heard of: The artists who come after the wave of moral outrage, look at the product and payout Spotify offers with fresh eyes and simply decide that none of it’s worth the bother in a streaming landscape with feasible alternatives.
Without the exclamatory social media post announcing their departure. Without the moral purity test of a permanent boycott. Without the ideological commitment of taking a principled stand. But all the same, the foundation of the streaming platform’s industry dominance gets quietly chipped away. This is the way Spotify ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.
Hit this
Sunday: DJ Groan Man’s “Both Kinds: Country and Western” (State Park, Cambridge)
DJ Groan Man spins an all-vinyl set at the Kendall Square dive from 3 to 6 p.m. The gig is part of a monthly series called “Both Kinds,” which presents selections from his immaculate collection of country and western music. I admit to being a little gun-shy about this sort of music in a cultural moment in which fanning commercial stars of the genre such as Morgan Wallen feels like a proxy vote for right-wing hooliganism. But if there’s anyone I’d trust to laser target what’s golden and eternal in this brand of Americana, it’s DJ Groan Man, a man of many talents and a big music buff. Wash down some hot Duck Nachos with an ice cold Aecht Schlenkerla while you’re there.
Sep. 12: Hack the Planet as “Hackers” celebrates 30 Years (Somerville Theatre, Somerville)
Sights, sounds, stars and spectacle! A screening of the new classic “Hackers,” featuring Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller at the height of their teenage heartthrobdom, is just one part of an event that packs in live music (Battlemode), DJs, digital art projections and special appearances by “Hackers” alums Renoly Santiago (aka The Phantom Phreak) and Laurence Mason (aka Lord Nikon). This is the second “Hack the Planet” event in two years at the theater. If it happens again in 2026, they should bring back Fisher Stevens (aka The Plague), everyone’s favorite corporate, skateboard-riding supervillain: “Never fear. I is here.”
Sep. 13: Black Moth Super Rainbow (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
According to Black Moth Super Rainbow’s own expert testimony, the Pittsburgh outfit has evolved from the “scuzzier and folk-tinged backwoods leaf worship” to “more anthemic roller disco fog machine scenes” to the dark turns of recent albums such as “Panic Blooms” (also released in a slowed-down version called “Panic Fades”) and the latest full-length LP, “Soft New Magic Dream.” Through it all, the band has remained true to their vision quest, “never fully eschewing BMSR’s signature strange liquid centers.” Openers Ricky Eat Acid and Aitis Band will get your trip started on a good foot.
Live: Tequila Sirens at the Lizard Lounge
The ruby-lit underworld at 1667 Massachusetts Ave. hosted a triple stack bill of indie rock Thursday. It wasn’t quite an album release party, but headliner Tequila Sirens were still bathing in the dewy afterglow of their recent LP “Imposters,” an alt-rock sampler that dropped in June. The four piece served up the standard trio of guitar, bass and drums plus liberal helpings of keyboard.
You can make an educated guess about who’s chiefly responsible for songwriting by picking out which instruments fill up the most space and cross-referencing that with the vocalists. If you’re playing and singing the most, you’re probably the songwriter.
That’s not a function of ego so much as a practical matter related to the genesis of a song. At some point in the song’s life, it was a kernel of an idea in one musician’s mind, who coaxed it into reality on whatever was their preferred instrument, in a bedroom or basement. Henceforth, that instrument will serve all at once as the song’s foundation, guideposts and destination, the “without which” the song can’t find its way from start to finish.
The keyboard parts in the Tequila Sirens set fit the above description most precisely. With mixed results. The layers of keys added a warmth and complexity to what otherwise might have been humdrum chord progressions from a standard alt-rock trio.
But keyboards are a helluva drug. You’ve got to back them off once in a while to give the other instruments room to breathe. If you don’t, the sonic interior of the song starts to resemble homes with wall-to-wall carpeting. You ever visit one of those houses when you were a kid? There was always some hypertensive mother yelling at you not to trek mud into the house. No fun.
Psych rockers Daughter of the Vine and indie rawkers Headband opened in the second and first slot, respectively. If you’re wondering whether there’s any substance to the distinction between “rocking” and “rawking,” listen to these bands side by side and the orthographic nuance will become clear.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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