King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard reflect on removing their music from Spotify

Last month, Aussie rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard became the latest in a string of bands to remove their music from Spotify, following a high-profile investment from CEO Daniel Ek in AI-driven military weapons company Helsing.

While King Gizzard’s Spotify profile remains active, the vast majority of their music is now unavailable.

Now, in a new interview with the LA Times, frontman Stu Mackenzie has spoken further on the band’s decision to leave the platform.

Upon hearing about Ek’s investment in Helsing, Mackenzie explains that he felt “a bit of shock”, followed by a “feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked”.

“We’ve been saying fuck Spotify for years,” he goes on. “In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented.

We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought, ‘I don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now.’ I don’t really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing. But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.”

King Gizzard’s decision to leave Spotify followed the same decision taken by indie rockers Xiu Xiu and art rock outfit Deerhoof.

But regardless of where the band stood on their opposition to Daniel Ek’s Helsing investment, they noted that many of their fans use Spotify to listen to their music.

“The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people,” Mackenzie continues. “I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people.

“But sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now.’ In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship.”

Despite what is, in any case, a big decision for the band to leave Spotify, Mackenzie reckons Daniel Ek won’t take any notice.

“I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this…” he says. “It feels like an experiment to me, like, ‘Let’s just go away from Spotify, and let’s see what happens.’ Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.”

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of MusicRadar, Guitar World, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer.