Bands Are Leaving Spotify, It's About Bloody Time
A different kind of independence day
Last weekend was Independence Day here in the United States. Not exactly the most festive time to be an American. Even absent the noxious political climate I’d have a hard time getting excited about a holiday that terrifies my dog for a week straight. Still, there are some expressions of independence that give me a little whiff of that ol’ patriotic spirit. Here’s a recent example: the independent rock band Deerhoof announced that they were pulling their 20 full lengths and nearly as many EPs worth of music off of the digital streaming platform Spotify. The band has been outspoken in their dislike of the platform for years, but drew the line at Daniel Ek (Spotify’s Lex Luthor) investment in military AI technology. Pretty reasonable to me! Blame a childhood spent watching Superman cartoons, but I certainly wouldn’t want my art to help fund the creation of robots that kill people. As a listener who ditched my Spotify account earlier this year I cheered Deerhoof on from the sidelines. As a far less popular musician I had a slightly different reaction. I couldn’t help but recall a scene from Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day when the British army learns that the film’s American heroes have begun their counter-offensive against the evil invaders from outer space.
“Well it’s about bloody time. What do they plan to do?”
As a pre-teen watching this movie for the first time I found this line hilarious. What, so the rest of the world was just waiting for the United States to do something? At least in Arrival the Chinese military was assumed to have the agency to act in its own self-interest, if not the world’s. As ridiculous as this summer blockbuster scenario is, it isn’t far off from how most of the musician end of the music industry has behaved over the last decade. It is by now accepted truth that Spotify does not pay what it should to the rights holders from which it builds its catalog. Less widely held though no less heavily discussed is the notion that Spotify has had a corrosive effect on music’s soul through its incentivization of passive, contextless listening habits. No musician I’ve met particularly *likes* Spotify, even the ones I know who make decent money on the platform. And yet despite this widespread grumbling everyone has been waiting for someone else to take action first.
Notable names have taken a stand prior to Deerhoof. Joanna Newsom has famously never had her music available on the platform. Tool kept their albums off of Spotify for years until finally caving with the release of Fear Inoculum in 2019. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell both bailed around the time that Spotify backed up the brink truck to Joe Rogan’s podcast studio, though Young returned after Spotify made some minor tweaks to their audio options. None of these isolated acts of disengagement galvanized the rest of us to follow in their footsteps, however. Of course Newsom, Tool, Young, and Mitchell can afford to hold out. Tool tour arenas for years on end without releasing new music. Young and Mitchell are both living legends with substantial career earnings. Joanna Newsom is significantly less popular, but she’s still plenty successful and married to a famous comedy actor. The average working band on the other hand can’t risk losing even the small income provided by streaming, the conventional thinking goes. Pulling music from Spotify would be a more meaningful gesture from a band with thinner margins, like, say, Deerhoof.
Early returns on a wave of artists following in Deerhoof’s wake are slim. Greg Fox posted about pulling his solo music. A number of other artists in my circle seem to be leaning in that direction. I salute any and all artists taking this stand, but I also can’t fight the nagging feeling that we all wasted a lot of time by not getting the ball rolling on this sooner. It’s hard to quantify the damage it’s done to musician advocacy to have spent the last decade talking about the low payouts without, you know, doing something about it. It has not helped the cause to appear to be complaining about small portions from the worst restaurant in town. Even more aggravating, the advocates for higher payouts have made these demands using the language of labor unions. I’m no labor historian, but I do live in Chicago where I can readily find memorialized evidence of workers straight up dying for the eight hour work day. Removing your music from Spotify takes far less commitment than throwing dynamite at cops and we should all be frankly embarrassed to conflate the musician’s struggle with the rest of the labor movement if we’re not willing to take the financial hit that comes with a strike.
So yes, it’s about bloody time that independent artists start acting on that independence. And to the creeps upstairs pouring money into weapons of war, in the words of my generation: up yours.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Listen to this year’s running diary on Apple Music.
“Do You Understand” by Anthem (No Smoke Without Fire, 1990)
Shout out to Jake Cole for talking about this Japanese heavy metal band on Bluesky. I won’t deny that part of the appeal here is the irony in a song sung in language I don’t speak sporting a chorus asking me if I understand in a language that I do. Sorry, I do not understand what you are saying! Except, then I hear the bass and guitars trading solos and I do understand in a way that words cannot access.
“Desarraigo” by Habak (Mil Orquídeas En Medio Del Desierto, 2025)
Shout out to Zachary Lipez for recommending this Mexican screamo band in his newsletter. I don’t always gel with this type of Envy-esque hardcore because it can feel like the bands just throw one objectively “stirring” melody after another into their songs with no regard to structure. Not so with this tune! Not only does the song overall have an excellent flow of ideas from one part to the other, but the melodies themselves feel more tightly composed and ordered than most screamo bands care to aspire to.
“Mandarin Tree” by Phoebe Rings (Aseurai, 2025)
Flexitone alert! I love how often it feels like the melodies are a half measure shorter than you’d expect them to be, the whole song slides effortless forward. Lots of great detail in the guitar part in the right channel. This New Zealand band reminds me more than a little of the Atlanta homies in True Blossom, so if you’re into that kind of meticulous soft rocking grown-up pop music you’ll probably dig this too.
“Flumlindalë” by Flummox (Southern Progress, 2025)
If I were still head editor at a metal blog Flummox are the exact kind of band I’d push extra hard. I’m talking interviews, track premieres, the works! Finding bands like Flummox, who write brain-boggling, Cardiacs-level-zany progressive metal, is why it pays off to keep tabs on what randos on RYM are talking about it. This largely instrumental track however demonstrates the Nashville group’s version of restraint, more patient and grand in its roll out than the chaos on the rest of the track list. Plus, get a load of that album art. Exciting stuff!
“So Be It” by Aesop Rock (Black Hole Superette, 2025)
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but sometime after the calendar flipped to 2025 I became a late-period Aesop Rock enthusiast. I think this is the third time he’s appeared in the newsletter this year. You spend enough time listening to a guy and you start to intuit the logic of his lyrics a little quicker. At this point I expect all third person narration to be self-descriptive, an assumption that made the switch to first person at the climax of the second verse all the more cathartic.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my vast Rate Your Music catalog. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links.
Echoes of Silence by The Weeknd (2011) - R&B
The finale of The Weeknd’s name-making mixtape trilogy and my personal introduction/initiation to not only his music but R&B in general. What drew me in? Two major factors. First, the persona. The Weeknd sung behind the shadow of semi-anonymity as a spectator and avid participant in the dying days of what I guess we’re calling the Indie Sleaze era. I suspect that someone as clearly dedicated to the studio as The Weeknd probably didn’t party as frequently as the music suggests, but like his cameo in Uncut Gems he knows how to play the character with the right balance of sliminess and insecurity. Second, the production. The details of exact who did what are murky, but I’ve always assumed that Illangelo played a major role in this tape’s mix of hard drums and dreamy ambience. Plus, Clams Casino contributes one of his spookier backing tracks from his peak run. These hooks aside what’s sustained my love for this tape is the excellent songwriting and The Weeknd’s incredible vocal performance. He may have been “only 21”, as he frequently reminds listeners, but he sang these songs like a seasoned pro. Just listen to the way he varies the shape of the vowels on “Same Old Song”. Even his penchant for 80s pastiche is here albeit in a lower budget form, drawing from hair metal and goth-y new wave, along with the decade’s own R&B. However it’s impossible to hear this as anything but a product of the early 2011s, I mean, jeez, this was the first album I saw a reaction video for!
The Second Death of Pain of Salvation by Pain of Salvation (2009) - Progressive Metal
As an American my chances to see Pain of Salvation live are scant, so I’ve had to indulge my (admittedly bizarre) passion for this Swedish prog metal band from afar. This double disc/dvd from a show in the Netherlands is the best vehicle for these vicarious thrills. Recorded at the end of their Scarsick tour, and just before a significant chunk of their lineup turned over, this set draws from their whole catalog to this point in time, making it handy retrospective of the band’s best era. The older the songs the better they sound. Hearing them with live clarity makes you really appreciate how dense the arrangements are, especially between the two guitars and the band-wide vocal harmonies. There are also some major changes to the tunes, like the extra breakdown at the end of “Handful of Nothing”, the inverted dynamics of “Undertow”, or the medley of softer songs. It’s these extra flourishes that make Second Death a worthwhile listen. The same cannot be said of the stage banter, which is uniformly terrible LMAO. Gildenlow’s smugness and sense of superiority to the role of “rock star” is a necessary by-product of his outrageous ambition. Luckily each time he stops talking and starts singing the bad vibes immediately wash away. My only real complaint: play more than one song from BE, you coward!
Bloom by Beach House (2012) - Indie Rock
The first time I listened to this album I was zonked out of my gourd on painkillers after getting my wisdom teeth removed. It was also the first album I ever listened to on Spotify. The poetic resonance between those two facts might say all that needs to be said. Despite the pleasure this record gives me, I can’t escape the nagging ache of the truth it points to: that a startling amount of indie rock is just weed music for yuppies, Stereolab without theory. Still, I admire Beach House’s aesthetic purity, their monomaniacal commitment to their limited arrangements and the pursuit of such a narrow sliver of perfection. In another life they’d be Cannibal Corpse. Like many great but not perfect albums before it, Bloom starts and ends strong while the quality of the middle tracks depend on how bought into the vibe you are. “Lazuli” and “Wishes” are the best representative from either side of that gulf. Great summer record.
Kindred by Burial (2012) - Dubstep
The beginning of Burial’s long-form era, which continues to this day. Previous LPs & EPs consisted of songs that cut off at pop friendly lengths, but starting on Kindred Burial started to let his grooves breath and get comfortable. As much as I love Untrue this approach results in more “authentic” dance music, giving you time to lose yourself in the repetition. This trio also features more rhythmic variety too, like the four-on-the-floor pulse of “Loner”. Still, this isn’t a total reinvention. The same crackly, rain drenched Burial you know and love is here, just sharper and in high definition. The title track has one of my favorite Burial beats ever, I’ve spent years trying to master it on drums!
The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski (2002) - Ambient
Let’s be real, this is more of an art object than a record. If you try and approach the music without its framing (the album art) and it’s context (decaying tapes transferred to digital on the day of 9/11) you’re left with not all that much. A few hours worth of depressing background humming. It is a better use of everyone’s time to spend those hours actively interrogating the album’s presentation and reputation the way you would a painting in a museum. Is it exploitative of the event? Was Basinski just “lucky”? Obviously the music was not written with 9/11 in mind, nor do I think the event itself is best represented by a slowly decaying loop. 9/11 was a pair of exclamation points, not an ellipsis. This record can only pale in comparison to the event itself (no Stockhausen, but he did kinda cook with that gaff...). So what *does* the decaying loop stand in for? The slow crumbling of the American empire? The banalizing repetition of national narratives that gradually reduce real tragedies to slogans and propaganda? Memory itself, despite the urging to “never forget”, fading inevitably over time? idk dog, the Richard Gin picture is better imo.