Sylvan Esso returned on Tuesday with their first new single in three years, and with a message: Sylvan Esso is leaving Spotify. The duo, which consists of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, join a growing number of groups who are boycotting the streaming platform due to Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s investment in AI military technology. Coincidentally, Tuesday also saw the announcement of Ek’s transition from CEO to executive chairman of Spotify, as he passes the leadership role to new co-CEOs Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström.
Sylvan Esso shared that they’d be pulling their catalog off Spotify to accompany the drop of new single “WDID.” In a statement (via Stereogum), the duo said, “As we prepare to release new music, we have to decide what we want to be a part of and what we don’t. To that end, with Sylvan Esso being on our own label for the first time, we have decided to remove our music from Spotify. While no solution is perfect, we simply can’t continue to put our life’s work in a store that, in addition to all its other glaring flaws, directly funds war machines. [Reaching] towards the world we all deserve, even though we are not in it yet.”
The current spate of departures from Spotify started in June with Deerhoof, who said in a statement, “We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.” Since then, Xiu Xiu, Hotline TNT, The Mynabirds, WU LYF, Kadhja Bonet, Young Widows, Chad VanGaalen, David Bridie, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and the label Kalahari Oyster Cult have all pulled their music (per Rolling Stone). A large group of Chicago indie musicians, including Twin Peaks, Mykele Deville, and more, also signed an open letter stating their intentions to remove their music, citing issues including AI music, unfair compensation, user surveillance, and the investments in AI militarism. (“Music should not fund the dreams of a war profiteer. Daniel Ek and his ilk do not deserve to benefit from our work,” the letter states.) Earlier this month, Massive Attack joined the No Music For Genocide boycott (which calls for music to be geo-blocked in Israel). In its statement, the band added, “Unconnected to this initiative & in light of the (reported) significant investments by it’s [sic] CEO in a company producing military munition drones & Al technology [integrated] into fighter aircraft, Massive Attack have made a [separate] request to our label that our music be removed from the Spotify streaming service in all territories.”
In his new position as executive chairman (which goes into effect January 1, 2026), Ek is “going to be involved in the long arc of the company, the big strategy decisions, the big capital allocation decisions,” he told Forbes. He also continues to be chair of Helsing, the AI defense start-up in which Ek’s investment company Prima Materia poured hundreds of millions of dollars. Ek has cited the war in Ukraine as a reason behind the necessity of the technology. “I’m sure people will criticise it and that’s OK,” he told The Financial Times in June. “Personally, I’m not concerned about it. I focus more on doing what I think is right and I am 100 percent convinced that this is the right thing for Europe.”
