So You Want to Remove Your Music From Spotify
Artists and labels on the realities of taking their work off the world’s biggest—and most maligned—music streaming service.
For someone who’s been up for 25 straight hours, Will Anderson is impressively coherent—especially since the 36-year-old frontman for shoegaze maximalists Hotline TNT has never stayed awake for so long in his entire life. “Just a little endurance test,” he deadpans.
When I connect with Anderson in early September, he’s at the tail end of a wily experiment in modern music promotion: a marathon video livestream aimed at selling 500 copies of his group’s new album, Raspberry Moon, via Bandcamp. News of the online event came bundled with the announcement that Hotline TNT were joining the growing list of artists—including King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Massive Attack, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor—who’ve recently taken their music down from the planet’s most dominant audio streaming platform: Spotify.
The livestream was a way for Anderson to offset that lost Spotify revenue, talk to artists and journalists (like me) about the woeful economic realities of the streaming era, and just connect with fans in a very human way. Playing like charmingly amateur public access telethon, the broadcast featured comedian Eric Rahill riffing on the corrosive influence of Spotify’s personal AI DJ, Hotline TNT manager Rusty Sutton breaking down the band’s financials, and Wednesday leader Karly Hartzman presenting a slideshow on DIY ethics and explaining how listeners can painlessly move their music libraries from Spotify to a different service—all between stretches of Anderson playing video games with his friends. Anderson’s adorably grumpy-looking white fluffball of a cat made a few cameos, too.
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By now, most conscientious music fans know why so many artists are choosing to remove their music from Spotify: Low royalty rates. Payola-like practices. Algorithmic shenanigans that promote glorified muzak over genuine artists. “Lean-back listening.” CEO Daniel Ek’s investment firm funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into military technology. (I wrote about many of these factors a couple of months ago in a post about Hearing Things’ decision to cancel our own paid Spotify account, and I highly recommend Liz Pelly’s recent book Mood Machine if you’re looking for an in-depth account of Spotify’s alleged treacherousness.)
So instead of rehashing why so many musicians are leaving Spotify these days, I wanted to find out more about how it’s being done, and what it means for their financial future moving forward.
