Green MP Tamatha Paul and journalist David Farrier are among the New Zealanders opting out of popular online platforms Spotify and Substack. Composite photo / Supplied, 123rf, substack.com
Green MP Tamatha Paul and journalist David Farrier are among high-profile New Zealanders quitting billion-dollar platforms Spotify and Substack over concerns including spending on weapons, the use of AI and a lack of content moderation.
In June, Spotify chief executive and co-founder Daniel Ek announced that through his venture capital firm, Prima Materia, he is investing €600 million ($1.18 billion) in Helsing, an AI defence start-up based in Germany that creates advanced weaponry for warfare.
Ek, who is also chairman of Helsing, previously invested $197.3 million in the company in 2021. He said in a recent public statement: “As Europe rapidly strengthens its defence capabilities in response to evolving geopolitical challenges, there is an urgent need for investments in advanced technologies that ensure its strategic autonomy and security readiness.”
Since Ek’s funding announcement, several musicians have quit Spotify, including Australian bands King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, and artists Leah Senior and David Bridie.
Kiwis, including Wellington Central MP Paul (Ngāti Awa, Waikato Tainui) and Auckland melodic hardcore band Take Hold have also withdrawn from participation.
Paul posted a video on social media last week explaining why she had “drawn the line” with Spotify, citing Ek’s military investments. The clip has garnered more than 160,000 views and nearly 400 comments on TikTok and Instagram combined.
She said she has moved her playlists to Apple Music, which she claimed “isn’t miles better but it’s definitely better than Spotify”.
Speaking to the Herald, Paul said she was “happy to report after a week of no Spotify, I’m doing well. I feel great knowing my money isn’t regularly going into other people’s wars”.
“On top of that, no streaming platform could ever beat showing up to shows, getting the vinyls, downloading on Bandcamp and supporting our local artists here in Aotearoa.”
A Spotify AUNZ spokesperson said they were unable to comment on Ek’s personal investments.
For Take Hold band members, the move to cancel their use of the platform was more than Ek’s involvement with Helsing. It was also about Spotify’s “attitude toward AI-created content on their platform”.
In July, Velvet Sundown released two albums and had more than 1 million plays on Spotify, before it was revealed they were an AI-created band. Speaking to the Guardian at the time, a Spotify spokesperson said: “All music on Spotify, including AI-generated music, is created, owned and uploaded by licensed third parties”.
Take Hold vocalist Jai Aronsen told the Herald: “These are demonstrated values we can no longer endorse. Corporatism and militarism are like two of the least punk things in history.
“Collective action only works collectively, and of all things, making music should be done with a clear conscience.”
Spotify, founded in 2006, is the world’s most popular music-streaming platform, boasting more than 696 million users and providing widespread reach to old and new fans, and the earning potential that comes with a large audience.
Spotify does not pay artists directly. Instead, it pays the rights holders of the music, such as record labels, distributors, aggregators or collecting societies royalties based on “how many times music from a specific rights holder was streamed, then dividing it by the total number of streams in that market”. Rights holders then pay artists based on their agreements.
In New Zealand, artists whose music is played on the radio are also paid similarly – radio stations pay firms like the Australasian Performing Right Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society, which then pay royalties to songwriters, publishers and composers – not the performing artists directly.
Spotify’s website states that in 2024, artists earned around US$10,000 ($16,882) in royalties for every million streams. However, many independent artists struggle to reach significant streaming numbers, making it very rare to make a living from royalties.
“Musicians have been screaming bloody murder over the Spotify model for years now,” says Stan Woodhouse, the Kiwi frontman of Melbourne-based band Skyscraper Stan and the Commission Flats.
“What could have been an accessible way to share music has become a trap,” he said. “Promoters are increasingly using streaming stats to make bookings, so artists, especially in the early stages of their careers, are stuck giving away their music for a pittance – if they’re lucky.”
Spotify maintains that it has paid out “more than any other streaming service”. The company stated on its website that in 2024, it paid the music industry more than US$10b.
When asked if the band is concerned with losing its reach with its fans after quitting the platform, Take Hold’s Aronsen said: “We’re not here to cater and compromise for the sake of an algorithm just to watch our metrics tick up.”
Spotify has been subject to artist boycotts before. One memorable spat occurred in 2022, when Neil Young claimed podcaster Joe Rogan was promoting misinformation about vaccines and boycotted Spotify in protest. He returned to the platform two years later.
Other prominent artists, including Prince, Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, had previously left Spotify for separate concerns. Their music has also since returned to the platform.
Meanwhile, Substack users, including journalist David Farrier, are also leaving that online platform – on which creators are able to publish newsletters and manage paid subscriptions – over concerns about the emergence of extremist content.
The conversation began in 2023, when an article by Jonathan Katz titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem”, was published in The Atlantic. In it, Katz claimed: “Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.”
It prompted an open letter from 247 Substack users to the platform bosses in December 2023. The following month, Kiwi journalist David Farrier, who writes a newsletter called Webworm, discussed the issue at length with his readers. Last Friday, he announced Webworm is finally leaving Substack.
Citing reporting by Taylor Lorenz, Farrier explained in the article that Substack sent out a push notification to mobile phones “encouraging users to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter that claimed Jewish people are a sickness and that we must eradicate minorities to build a ‘White homeland’.”
Speaking to the Herald, Farrier said he had been considering leaving Substack for the last year.
“It has not been a quick, knee-jerk reaction. In short, part of this is that I am not comfortable having 10% of my income go to a company that happily platforms Nazis – we are talking proper, full-on Nazis to be clear – [and] has actively promoted them,” Farrier said.
“On top of that, Substack has increasingly created lock-in for writers that makes it harder and harder to leave. Right now, Substack has massive backers and investment – and those people are going to want their money back. I believe there will be a rug pull – and so for the sake of my work and for my readers, I decided to get out on my own before it’s too late.”
Substack did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.
Webworm is now run on an open-source platform called Ghost and Farrier has already migrated his readers over, meaning little changes for them.
“I can keep doing my journalism,” he said.
“For me, I lose out on Substack’s amazing algorithm that found me new readers. But that same algorithm also served my readers up health misinformation and conspiracy theories – which goes against the entire ethos of what I try and do.
“It’s a risk, and I rely on people to find my work in other ways.”
Popular New Zealand writer and commentator Emily Writes also announced in a paywalled post she was leaving the platform.
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, travel and more.