Is a tipping point coming for Spotify?

Plus some newsletters I liked this week.

Hello and welcome to ZERO CRED, the only newsletter about music in the world. I am writing this from a hotel room somewhere in Texas. Please excuse the typos. Or don’t what do I care not my problem.

It feels like Spotify is heading towards a breaking point. For years listeners have largely shrugged their shoulders when it comes to the abysmal rates the streaming service has paid out to artists because, well, most other services ain’t much better. (I admit to using Spotify as my primary streaming service but to be fair I’ve been leeching off my friend’s family plan for years.) But it feels like a sea change is approaching, with a few notable indie artists announcing recently that they will be removing their music from Spotify.

If Spotify had simply continued their business model of being internet middlemen who profit off the work of artists despite having no ownership of it whatsoever, it may not have gotten to this point, but Spotify can’t seem to stop being brazenly fucking evil. Every headline with the word Spotify in it reads like a news story from a dystopian sci-fi novel where the president is a Nazi cyborg:

Spotify Publishes AI-Generated Songs From Dead Artists Without Permission

Spotify Is Forcing Users to Undergo Face Scanning to Access Explicit Content

(Again, I am not trying to neglect the inherent problems of Spotify’s tech peers. By all means, check out how Apple is donating money to the IDF.)

But a recent story about Spotify seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people. Spotify CEO and disfigured thumb who made a wish to become a real boy Daniel Ek recently invested over $600 million into a company that develops AI-driven military drones. Why a company that’s in the business of streaming music and podcasts needs to invest with defense companies is a real mystery but the news didn’t go over well.

Extremely popular psych rock band King Gizzard and the Wizard announced that they’ll be removing their huge catalog from Spotify as a direct response. Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Massa Nera and others have also jumped ship. It seems reasonable to assume that this trend will continue among independent artists.

I tend to avoid trying to predict the future but I can definitely envision a scenario where enough indie artists leave the platform that a moral line in the sand begins to appear. If nothing else, having your music on Spotify might soon have a stigma to it, or at the very least be deemed extremely uncool. Deerhoof was clear that they “don’t judge those who can’t make the same move in the short term.” But if enough indie artists disavow Spotify, would the minority that remains start to seem like traitors?

A few years ago I wrote a book called SELLOUT about the stigma that came with an independent band signing to a major label or taking a commercial gig in the 90s. To be clear, it was an environment that was often puritanical and sometimes hypocritical, but it did keep people honest or at least make them consider how their personal decisions affect the greater independent ecosystem. But I think in the years since then we’ve gone too far the other direction. There is almost no accountability among independent artists now because the profit margins have been squeezed so thin by corporations that everyone is looking out for themselves. Begrudging your indie peers for taking the rare paycheck opportunity that comes along just seems petty these days.

But maybe we’re headed back to a time where the line between independent and corporate music will be drawn a little more clearly. Or maybe Spotify will kill us all with drones.