{"id":316409,"date":"2025-12-15T00:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/316409\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T00:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T00:48:07","slug":"king-gizzard-and-the-lizard-wizard-hit-back-at-ai-spotify-replacement-we-are-truly-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/316409\/","title":{"rendered":"King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard hit back at AI Spotify replacement: \u201cWe are truly doomed\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard<\/a>\u00a0have hit out at their\u00a0apparent\u00a0AI replacement on\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, claiming that \u201cwe are truly doomed\u201d.<\/p>\n

In July, the Australian garage rock band announced that\u00a0they were pulling\u00a0all of\u00a0their music from the streaming platform<\/a>\u00a0due to their opposition to the company\u2019s founder Daniel Ek funding the Helsing corporation.<\/p>\n

Ek co-founded the investment company Prima Materia, which has invested over \u20ac600million in Helsing, a Munich-based company creating drones and artificial intelligence for military operations, per the\u00a0Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since their withdrawal, a group of songs have been uploaded to a Spotify page named King Lizard Wizard, with some believing they have been AI-generated. King Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie is credited as the composer on the tracks.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0a response\u00a0to their alleged AI replacement, Mackenzie told\u00a0The Music<\/a>: \u201cTrying to see the irony in this situation. But seriously wtf we are truly doomed\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the time of their Spotify withdrawal, the band said:\u00a0\u201cHello friends. A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology. We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better? Join us on another platform.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mackenzie later explained their decision<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0been saying fuck Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends,\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0what people say all the time, for\u00a0all of\u00a0these other reasons which are well documented.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to explain that while he doesn\u2019t consider himself an activist and was not comfortable \u201csoapboxing\u201d, it felt like\u00a0\u201ca decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is\u00a0is\u00a0right for our\u00a0music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that made it hard was I do want to have our\u00a0music be\u00a0accessible to people,\u201d he added.\u00a0\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0really care about making money from streaming. I know\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0unfair, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since their decision,\u00a0King Gizzard have put their albums up for sale on Bandcamp<\/a>, allowing fans to name their price. You can access their records\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They are far from the only band to have pulled their music from Spotify this year \u2013\u00a0Xiu Xiu made a similar move due<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0Ek\u2019s\u00a0\u201cinvestment in AI war drones\u201d,\u00a0while\u00a0Massive Attack<\/a>, Deerhoof<\/a>, The Sabres Of Paradise<\/a>,\u00a0Hotline TNT<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Wu Lyf<\/a>\u00a0all removed their music too.<\/p>\n

In September,\u00a0Ek announced that he would be stepping down as CEO on January 1, 2026<\/a>, with Spotify co-presidents Alex\u00a0Norstr\u00f6m\u00a0and Gustav S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m set to take his place.<\/p>\n

During his tenure, Ek came under fire multiple times, including when it was reported that Spotify had made profits of over \u20ac1billion (\u00a3860million), but at the expense of staff being laid off, artists struggling to make any income from streaming, and subscription prices rising<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It became even harder for artists to make money from the platform last\u00a0year, when\u00a0Spotify\u00a0officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1,000 streams<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard\u00a0have hit out at their\u00a0apparent\u00a0AI replacement on\u00a0Spotify, claiming that \u201cwe are truly doomed\u201d.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,3584,4324,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-316409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-rock","12":"tag-spotify","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}