All eyes are on Spotify following CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek’s announcement that he will step down from CEO to executive chairman, effective Jan. 1, 2026. Ek explained to Forbes that he wanted time to focus on other ventures, including his investment holding company Prima Materia. In June, Ek announced he’d led an investment of nearly $700 million into the German startup Helsing, for which he serves as chairman — and which specializes in AI military technology, including arming Ukraine with strike drones. In response to the investment, a swath of artists announced that they would pull their music from Spotify, including Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, and Massive Attack.

Controversy is nothing new for Spotify. They’ve long been lambasted for low royalty payouts (i.e. a fraction of a cent per stream). In 2022, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell took their music off Spotify to protest the platform’s exclusive hosting of right-wing podcast The Joe Rogan Experience (their music returned to Spotify when the podcast became available on other platforms). The January 2025 issue of Harper’s Magazine featured journalist Liz Pelly’s bombshell report on Spotify’s Perfect Fit Content initiative, wherein the company commissioned “vibe music” in bulk from stock music companies to further reduce royalty payouts. This set the stage, Pelly hypothesized, for Spotify to host AI-generated music, which has been appearing on the platform with increasing frequency. 

The conversation around Spotify is uniquely relevant to Oberlin, where serious music fans and independent recording musicians abound — not to mention the ongoing Year of AI Exploration. College second-year Zoe Stern, an avid listener and aspiring recording artist, dropped Spotify for personal and political reasons.

“I’ve been trying to change my relationship with technology to be less dependent on it, and Spotify was a huge roadblock,” they said. “When I found out the CEO of Spotify was investing in AI battlefield technology, [that was] my final straw.”

College second-year Rudy Bailey, on the other hand, has made several attempts to stop using Spotify, citing low royalty payouts and Ek’s investment, but always gets reeled back in. On the failed attempt before their most recent (which began and ended quickly mere hours before we spoke), it took just two days before they subscribed to Premium again, opting for the lower-priced student plan.

“I thought … ‘I’m giving this company a little bit less money,’” Bailey said. “‘This still is technically better. Morally, I can stomach it.’”

Bailey said Spotify’s social aspects make quitting difficult. Stern, who now solely uses physical media and artist-driven distribution platforms Bandcamp and SoundCloud, said they miss sharing playlists with friends via Spotify.

College fourth-year Jacob Leavey, who records and DJs under the stage name carrots (and variations including carr0ts and C4RR0TS), ditched Spotify and subscribed to Apple Music after Ek’s investment, though they’d already taken issue with Spotify’s low royalty payments. They said Spotify has paid almost nothing for streams of their collaborative project with College fourth-year Naomi Kuropatwa, who uses the stage name w/lson.

“I’ve made basically zero dollars off [Spotify streams],” Leavey said. “From all streaming on all platforms … I’ve probably made a dollar, two dollars total. On Spotify, [it’s] maybe half … or a quarter of that, which is kind of shocking given that the majority of our streams are on Spotify.”

Leavey just self-released an EP exclusively on SoundCloud and Bandcamp; in addition to their gripes with Ek, it was inconvenient and expensive to distribute the EP on Spotify, which doesn’t support self-release without paid distribution services like DistroKid. Conservatory third-year Sam Roberson, a jazz guitarist and longtime Apple Music user, recently released his debut solo album on all major streaming platforms except Spotify due to Ek’s investment.

“It would be bad enough if it was AI anything, but AI drones?” Roberson said. “AI military technology that’s being shipped straight to Israel? … It’s both rooted in my complete aversion to … AI and … investment into the military industrial complex that is directly aiding a genocide.”  (Helsing denies that their technology is being deployed anywhere but Ukraine.)

Roberson said he reacted strongly and quickly to the news about Ek and clarified that other major streaming companies aren’t in line with his values, either; in his ideal world, his music wouldn’t be streamed at all. Still, he strongly objected to Spotify’s particular involvement with AI.

“AI is pushing toward the death of human creativity,” Roberson said. “It’s incredibly ironic that a service where you can find some of the most creative music ever recorded is also investing [in] and utilizing something that … is just putting people on the path to destroy that.”

Roberson also said streaming is changing how we listen to music for the worse — if we still had to pay for every album, we would think more about what we listen to.

“The devaluing of art has been steady and ongoing, and streaming services don’t help,” he said. “Back in the day, you had to pay for [specific pieces of] music … but now … I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to go somewhere. I can listen to a billion albums for $10 a month.”

Stern’s experience corroborated this; they said they appreciate listening to music more after leaving Spotify. Bailey made a similar point.

“It’s so normal to be able to listen to anything whenever you want, wherever you want,” Bailey said. “Music no longer feels like an event.”

Roberson and Leavey were eager to suggest alternatives to Spotify and streaming in general — SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and the up-and-coming Nina, which claims to give artists 100 percent of revenue from digital music sales. Still, Roberson pointed out their limitations.

“I could take a stand [and not] put it on any streaming services, only Bandcamp or CD, but that severely limits the accessibility of the art,” Roberson said. “People don’t really know Bandcamp unless they’re musicians or into listening to music as a hobby.”

Bailey, a devoted CD collector, said relying on physical media is inconvenient, but also that investing in physical media pays artists better. They grappled with how they can best support the artists they like.

“I started to listen to a lot more artists that were either local or smaller-town, and I realized that the only ways these artists are getting money are through direct merch payments and physical media,” Bailey said. “If these people don’t have big-time Spotify listeners, no money’s going to them. If I’m not supporting them in any other way, nothing’s happening. But if my money is going to weapons manufacturing instead of paying these individuals, what kind of person am I?”