King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard recently announced their plans to leave Spotify, with frontman Stu Mackenzie saying that they “don’t expect [CEO] Daniel Ek to pay attention” to their exit.
The decision was made after it was revealed that Ek’s investment company, Prima Materia, is investing in Helsing, a German company that builds drones and artificial intelligence for military operations. In protest, King Gizzard — as well as other artists — have chosen to start taking their music off of Spotify so as to sever ties with Ek.
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, King Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie offered some insight into their decision and weighed in on Ek’s business moves, saying that it was “a bit of shock” to learn of Ek’s military drone investment, but “then feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked. We’ve been saying fuck Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented.”
“We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought ‘I don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now.’ I don’t really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing,” he continued. “But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.”
Asked if it was a difficult decision to leave Spotidy, Mackenzie replied: “The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, 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,” he continued. “But sometimes you’ve just got to say, ‘Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now.’ In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship. As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that because that’s not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes.
“I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that,” the singer went on to explain. “In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I’m just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us.”
Finally, Mackenzie made it clear that King Gizzard does not anticipate their leaving Spotify will even register with the company’s CEO. “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we’ve released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together.”
“I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you’ll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive. It feels like an experiment to me, like, ‘Let’s just go away from Spotify, and let’s see what happens.’ Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.”
The post King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Leaving Spotify: Frontman Stu Mackenzie Say They ‘Don’t Expect Daniel Ek To Pay Attention’ appeared first on VICE.
