SPOTIFY IS NOT A PLATFORM, IT’S A SYMPTOM OF SYSTEMIC ROT |

… and the smell has been wafting for years. When platforms like Spotify serve war profiteering on the side, it’s not just exploitative, it’s grotesque. Streaming music shouldn’t come bundled with drone software, institutional silence, and fractional pennies. This isn’t just about where we listen, it’s about who we let profit from our numbness.

It’s a crummy tenant relationship with artists, taking, taking, taking, and the leak doesn’t get repaired. Shortchanging artists for decades, paying them shreds of pennies per stream while fancifying itself as a revolutionary force for creativity. But, you know, as a rule, it’s a giant vending machine, a machine that dispenses the music, extracts the revenue, and sometimes buys war technology.

Music used to mean something. You know, emotional resonance, rebellion, community not just a playlist called Mood, curated by a machine that’s never felt a damn thing. But thanks to Spotify, and the industry rot it gleefully replicates, music has become a commodity with all the depth of a pint of overpriced piss at a festival.

Let’s get to the number-crunching. You get £0.003-£0.005 per stream as an artist. No, that wasn’t a misprint. That’s the standard fee for subjecting your bleeding heart and soul to a tune. A million streams might earn you £3,000 – £5,000 minus label, minus VAT, minus the sneers of the real world. That’s about enough money to treat yourself to a meagre Tesco trip, let alone a tour, a recording, and rent. And Spotify still refers to itself as the independent artist’s champion. If that helps, how does profiting at their expense look?

And then you have Spotify founder Daniel Ek, who wasn’t convinced music was rich enough and invested £700m in Helsing a defence tech company that constructs battlefield AI. Because when you think ‘music’, you think drone infrastructure and war software. Well, it wasn’t Spotify money. Just Ek money. But when your chief executive’s fun pastime activity is militarised surveillance, maybe your platform’s moral compass requires a software update.

And don’t claim Spotify’s neutral. Won’t mention Gaza. Won’t mention censorship. Won’t mention the times Palestinian artists are removed. Mohammed Assaf’s classic “Ana Dammi Falastini” disappeared overnight. It then resurfaced, but the damage was already done. And the excuse? A distributor glitch. The truth? A stark reminder that representation on these platforms is fragile, and it is granted conditionally, revoked silently, and never guaranteed.

Israel gets full access to Spotify services curated services, Spotify premium, ad-free playback. Palestinian territories are given limited access, inferior infrastructure, sporadic disappearance of cultural expression. Music, the universal language, must have been a misremembered memo. Spotify didn’t get the memo, apparently.

But all the same, the artists continue. Why? Because boycotting is forgettable. Because the fan remains a Spotify user. Because rights belong to labels. Because there is no united front, only scattered voices whispering through static. Because survival is a negotiation, not a guarantee. Because artists don’t love Spotify at all but they have to endure it. Because conviction is a luxury they can’t afford.

There are others, of course. Bandcamp enables the artist to sell directly to the people, take the lion’s share of the proceeds, and retain the material. Tidal pays better, doesn’t have a wing as a war subcontractor. Apple pays better royalty rates, hasn’t (yet) constructed war machines. SoundCloud raises a toast to the communal and the experimental ethos. Patreon enables the fanbase to subsidise the artist directly, middleman and algorithm exempted. Even YouTube Music, all sins permitted, yields visual narrative and ad revenue.

So the question isn’t simply “Why are artists still on Spotify?” It’s “Why are we still acting as though Spotify is the only choice?”

Why do we permit a system to underpay, overspend, and stay mum when things get bumpy?

BoyCotting a show doesn’t work. We have to put the apparatus itself into question the labels, the platforms, the ticketing, the algorithms. We have to question why a certain artist gets penalised for their politics when another gets rewarded for remaining silent.

And lastly, oh, music isn’t resistance because it’s loud. That’s marketing. Because when a platform subsidises war tech, remains silent about genocide, yet still requires the artists smile for the algorithm, it’s not broke, it’s complicit. Morals aren’t even required, though. Morals are perfectly fine. They’re the very problem.

You might not yet have the courage to break your streaming routine into pieces, yet you’d better apply brakes to the travesty that Spotify’s the sole jukebox downtown. There are better ways of hearing. Better ones. Better ones that don’t blast you with drone software. And your playlist does the whole apologia dance you could as well use a remix.