King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have put their albums up on Bandcamp, allowing fans to name their price after withdrawing their music from Spotify.
- READ MORE: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: “If something is shit and no one likes it, you just put out another one the next month”
Back in July, the Australian psych-rock outfit announced they would be pulling their music from the streaming platform over founder Daniel Ek’s funding of the Helsing corporation.
Ek co-founded an investment company, Prima Materia, which invested over €600million in Helsing, a Munich-based company creating drones and artificial intelligence for military operations, per the Financial Times.
At the time, the band wrote on social media: “Hello 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.”
The band have since gone one step further, making their music more accessible to listeners on Bandcamp by switching to a name-your-price model, which you can access here.
Fans can pay $0.00 and upwards to download any of the albums, a strategy that, as noted by Consequence, has seen various albums from across their discography top Bandcamp’s best-selling list. These include ‘PetroDragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation Of Planet Earth And The Beginning of Merciless Damnation’ and ‘Nonagon Infinity’
The current 27 best-selling albums on the site are all by King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard.
Those joining them in leaving Spotify included Xiu Xiu, who also announced that they were in the process of removing their music from the platform over Ek’s “investment in AI war drones”.
Deerhoof also pulled their catalogue from the streamer for the same reason, stating at the time: “We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech.”
In recent years, many have been divided about the impact of streaming platforms on the music industry. In 2024, for instance, Ek sparked backlash for his comments relating to the cost of “creating content”, with countless users and musicians describing him as “out of touch”.
Ek later walked back on his comments, explaining in an apology that he had no intention of dismissing the struggles faced by musicians and using the “reductive” label of “content”. The negative response to this was heightened as, around the same time, it was reported that Spotify had made profits of over €1billion (£860m), following staff being laid off and subscription prices rising.
Elsewhere earlier this year, Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth criticised the platform, saying he “owes it” to other musicians not to have an account, while Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante described streaming as the place “where music goes to die”.
The streaming platform also received criticism after it officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1,000 streams – making it harder for artists to generate royalties from their music and restricting new artists looking to crack the music industry.
