Godspeed You! Black Emperor is the latest act to remove their music from Spotify.
Over the past few months, many artists including Chad VanGaalen, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu have removed their music from Spotify. In addition to qualms round royalty payments, many artists have cited military investments made by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek through his investment fund Prima Materia. Since 2021, Prima Materia has been investing in Helsing, a defense company that sells AI software to inform military decisions. One song, a compilation track called “Outro,” is all that remains on Spotify.
Godspeed! has gone several steps further, removing nearly its entire discography from all major streaming services, including Tidal and Amazon Music.
Two of the long-running Canadian post-rock band’s albums on American independent record label Kranky — 1998’s F# A# ∞ and 2000’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven — are still up on Apple Music — but that’s also set to change soon.
“Kranky has always granted artists control over how their music is presented and disseminated,” a representative shared with Pitchfork, confirming that Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s remaining albums are in the process of being removed from the platform.
The band’s entire catalog is still available to buy and stream via Bandcamp.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor have had two albums on the Billboard 200, but they’ve had even more impact on sales charts. The group has earned five albums on Billboard’s Top Album Sales, including 2021’s G_d’s Pee At State’s End, which peaked at No. 8. Five albums have charted on the Vinyl Albums chart, with 2012’s Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! hitting No. 1.
That album won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize in 2012, but the band didn’t show up to receive the award, using the $30,000 prize to launch and fund a program to provide musical instruments to prisoners in Quebec.
The band’s label Constellation confirms that Godspeed! requested their catalog be removed from all digital platforms except Bandcamp, and says the band and label have no further comment.
Though the band hasn’t shared their exact reason for removing their music or if it is related to Ek’s military investments, they have often espoused anti-capitalist and anti-war perspectives. Their most recent album, 2024’s No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead, was titled after the death toll of Palestinians, as reported by Gaza’s Health Ministry, in Israel’s war in Gaza.
In a statement accompanying the album, the band wrote:
“THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.”
This article was originally published by Billboard Canada.
