Why artists left Spotify in 2025.

In June 2025 Daniel Ek's investment vehicle Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round in Helsing, a German defence-AI company building aerial and underwater drones. The round took Helsing's valuation past $12 billion. Ek is the chairman.

The reaction in the artist community was immediate and structural. Deerhoof pulled out first, on principle. Within weeks Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Chad VanGaalen, Leah Senior, and Massive Attack had followed. Massive Attack called the situation a moral and ethical burden in which the hard-earned money of fans and the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately funds lethal, dystopian technologies. In August 2025 Godspeed You! Black Emperor removed their full catalogue.

By late September the Washington Post was reporting the boycott as a pattern, not a fringe. By 1 October, Euronews reported that Daniel Ek would step down as CEO of Spotify in the new year, transitioning to executive chairman.

The Helsing story made something visible that already existed. Streaming as a business is structurally extractive at the artist end, and the listener's subscription is now flowing through a CEO whose personal investments fund military-AI hardware. The boycott was not really about Helsing. It was about the model.

DeepTune does not exist to replace Spotify for everyone. It exists for the artists for whom the maths never worked, and for the listeners who are starting to notice where their thirteen euros a month go after the platform takes its cut.

The boycott was not really about Helsing. It was about the model.