Yet again, Spotify finds itself at the center of several converging controversies. Artists, listeners, and corporate giants are asking the uncomfortable questions about where the world’s largest music streaming platform is actually headed.
From CEO investments in military technology to AI bands racking up millions of streams, to payouts that leave independent artists wondering if it’s even worth uploading, Spotify is facing a reckoning that goes far beyond the usual streaming platform drama.
Your favorite song paid its creator $0.27, even though you streamed it on repeat. Here’s what’s actually happening, why it matters, and what both sides are saying.
Maybe Skip This Investment
In June 2025, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek led a $702 million funding round for Helsing, a German defense startup specializing in AI-powered combat drones and military software, and assumed the role of chairman of the company.
This wasn’t Ek’s first investment in the company. He had previously invested $115 million in Helsing in 2021, but the scale of this latest commitment triggered immediate backlash, especially considering the company pays artists notoriously low royalties.
Multiple artists, including King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, and Massive Attack, have pulled their music from Spotify in protest. Deerhoof stated, “We don’t want our music killing people,” and calling the platform “an already widely hated data-mining scam masquerading as a ‘music company’. The United Musicians and Allied Workers union called Ek “a warmonger who pays artists poverty wages.”
Ek has publicly supported his investment, stating “War has made it clear: the future of defence is driven by AI, scale, and autonomy” and arguing that the technology is critical for Europe’s defense and technological sovereignty. Helsing’s technology has been deployed in Ukraine, which supporters argue makes this a matter of defending democracy rather than profiting from warfare.
Another similar boycott Spotify is facing is the “No Music for Genocide” campaign, launched on September 18, 2025. It describes itself as a cultural boycott initiative asking artists and rights-holders to geo-block their music from streaming platforms in Israel in response to the genocide in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 musicians and labels have participated, including Lorde, Clairo, Paramore, Fontaines D.C., Kneecap, Primal Scream, Rina Sawayama, Amyl & The Sniffers, Enter Shikari, Young Fathers, and Canadian artists like Caribou, Elisapie, and BadBadNotGood.
The campaign’s organizers cited historical precedent from the cultural boycott of apartheid-era South Africa and the international music industry’s shutdown of its offices and removal of music from Russia following that country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The AI Music Problem Nobody Can Agree On
Spotify faces a second controversy around AI-generated music that’s flooding the platform—and whether that’s actually a problem depends entirely on who you ask.
- The Scale: Spotify revealed it has removed more than 75 million “spammy tracks” from its platform over the past year. However, at the same time, Spotify’s head of artist and industry partnerships, Bryan Johnson, stated there is “infinitely small consumption of fully AI-generated tracks on Spotify” and that “there is no dilution of the royalty pool by AI music.”
- The Controversy: An AI-generated band called Velvet Sundown racked up millions of streams and appeared on Spotify with a “verified artist” badge before eventually acknowledging in its bio that it was “a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence”.
- Spotify’s Response: In September 2025, Spotify announced new policies, including a music spam filter to combat mass uploads and artificially short track abuse, enhanced protections against unauthorized AI voice clones, and an industry-standard system for AI disclosure in music credits.
- What They’re Not Doing: Unlike YouTube, Meta, and TikTok, Spotify is not currently taking steps to label AI-generated content for users. The company says it doesn’t police the creative tools artists use, but critics argue listeners deserve transparency about what they’re consuming.
The Payment Structure Debate That Hasn’t Ended
The third controversy is the oldest one: how much Spotify actually pays artists, and whether the company’s recent changes help or hurt independent musicians.
- The Numbers: Spotify pays artists between $0.003 to $0.005 per stream on average, while a 2024 report from Duetti found that Apple Music pays $6.20 per 1,000 streams compared to Spotify’s $3 per 1,000 streams. Starting in 2024, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months to generate recorded royalties.
- Spotify’s Argument: Spotify announced it paid a record $10 billion to the music industry in 2024. Nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify alone, with 80% of those artists never having a song reach the Global Daily Top 50 chart. The company argues the 1,000-stream threshold redirects “tens of millions of dollars annually” from payments under $0.03 that often don’t reach artists due to distributor minimum payout thresholds.
- The Artist Reality: Chris Robley calculated that Spotify’s policy change withheld approximately $47 million in royalties from small independent artists in 2024, money that was instead redistributed to artists with tracks exceeding 1,000 streams. According to a 2024 MIDIA Research report, of the approximately $0.004 generated per stream, songwriters receive just 68% of the 14% that goes to the publishing side—and that’s often split among 3 to 12 writers on hit songs.
Wrapping Up
These three controversies intersect in ways that reveal deeper questions about the streaming economy, corporate responsibility, and who actually benefits from the current system.
Artists leaving over military investments cite low payments as making the decision easier. The AI music debate connects to concerns about royalty pool dilution. Payment structure changes that Spotify frames as helping artists are being experienced as harmful by those at the bottom of the earnings ladder.
Dr. Sophie Freeman, a University of Melbourne researcher studying music streaming economics, suggests “We’re at a bit of a tipping point right now” as multiple frustrations with the platform converge to create boycott momentum.
Whether that momentum translates into meaningful change, or simply becomes another chapter in the long history of artists fighting for fair compensation, remains to be seen. What’s certain is that the conversation about streaming economics, AI ethics, and corporate responsibility isn’t going away, and Spotify will continue streaming at the center of all three debates.
