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.
I think you’re confusing Spotify with Apple or Google, just last year:
https://www.thedailyupside.com/industries/media-entertainment/spotify-just-turned-an-annual-profit-for-the-first-time-ever/
This is the same year it paid out
10 billion in a single year, not bad for a business model that’s “exploitation”
One of the things people struggle to understand is that it’s not the 70’s anymore, there is more music being uploaded every minute that you can listen to in a year, this has a diluting effect on the value of the thing being uploaded
On top of this piracy which is what Spotify is competing against, like the true cheapskates who don’t care about artists at all and simply rip youtube videos don’t pay artists a cent (or $15 a month, 70% of which goes to the music industry)
I do agree with this though
Didn’t confuse them with anyone, they put out a quarterly report as all publicly-traded companies do, and they’re on track to do over $2 billion in profit this year ($17b revenue).
What I didn’t go into depths to describe is that the vast majority of their money goes to big labels and several big artists they have less-favourable (to Spotify) contracts with, because those big labels and artists know they can pressure Spotify to get a bigger slice.
So, they continue to give most artists, especially small/new artists next to nothing, exploiting them.
Nothing I said is innacurate IMO.
Quarterly earnings and projections for 2025: https://musically.com/2025/04/29/spotify-q1-2025-financial-results-reveal-it-now-has-268m-paid-subscribers/ (And as you said they already turned a profit last year, which was over a billion).