Daniel Ek just stepped down as CEO of Spotify — now what?After nearly two decades running the world’s largest music streaming platform, Daniel Ek is stepping down as CEO of Spotify and into Executive Chairman. The move comes at a time when Ek has increasingly become a pimple on the face of Spotify, with his flippant comments about the music industry and morally questionable investments provoking an artist backlash that now seems to be snowballing into an avalanche. In that context, removing his name from Spotify’s front page can be seen as an attempt to distance the company from continued criticism.
Artists began boycotting Spotify after Ek’s venture capital firm, Prima Materia, led a €600 million round of investment in the AI defence company Helsing. In 2022, electronic music artist, Skee Mask, was among the first to take a stand on this issue. In 2025, the protest gained more momentum with indie-rock band Deerhoof who pulled their music from Spotify and published a scathing take-down of Ek, who, they maintained, has “never shown the slightest commitment to moral integrity”.

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“We don’t want our music killing people. We don’t want our success being tied to AI battle tech,” they added. The more of the killing you can get computers to do, the better your bottom line. AI violence also finally solves the perennial inconvenience to war-makers — It takes human compassion and morality out of the equation.”
The list of names departing Spotify grew bigger: WU LYF, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Cindy Lee, Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Hotline TNT, Young Widow.
Artist discontent reached a new level of publicity when hugely influential British trip-hop band, Massive Attack, put their weight behind the protest.
“The economic burden that has long been placed on artists is now compounded by a moral and ethical burden, whereby the hard-earned money of fans and the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately fund lethal, dystopian technologies. Enough is more than enough. Another way is possible.”
We can’t say for sure if the artist backlash put pressure on Ek, or the company Helsing, where he also holds the role of chairman. But following Massive Attack’s announcement, and just a week before he announced he was stepping down as CEO of Spotify, Helsing was forced to address some of the criticisms that were being voiced by artists.
“Currently we see misinformation spreading that Helsing’s technology is deployed in war zones other than Ukraine. This is not correct. Our technology is deployed to European countries for deterrence and for defence against the Russian aggression in Ukraine only.”
Of course, the whole ‘AI death machines’ thing is just one episode in a long string of controversies with David Ek at the heart of them all.
To briefly recap, Ek once tried to compare the music industry to professional sports in a blithe attempt to explain why so many artists earn next to nothing. When MusicTech took a swing at the numbers, it turns out you might actually have a better chance at a decent paycheck from playing football than you would earning livable wages from Spotify streaming revenue.
In another tone-deaf statement, he once posted on X that the cost of making music was “close to zero” causing deadmau5 to issue a seething response. “Incorrect. The cost of creating content was 25+ years of my life and much of those proceeds going to your company you complete fucking idiot.”
Ek has gotten in trouble for more than just his words. In the 2025 book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, author Liz Pelly explains how Spotify was caught stuffing its recommendation playlists with music they had commissioned from partners. In short, they were asking for generic, bargain-bin imitations of the music they knew no one paid attention to, i.e. ‘music to fall asleep to’.
In an investigation by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, it was found that as few as 20 songwriters were behind more than 500 “artists” work on Spotify. A scheme that, in theory, would have allowed Spotify to avoid paying out royalties.
As for the threat of AI-generated music flooding the platform? Only in 2025 has Spotify begun to take action by removing 75 million ‘spam’ tracks from its platform. However, artists are still grappling with the impact of AI generated music and while Deezer has been transparent about the problem, Spotify has avoided releasing the number of AI tracks currently on its platform, and haschosen not to identify or label potential AI-generated music.
Perhaps what is most telling is that in his farewell statement, Ek never once mentions the word “music”. However, he does use the word “product” three times. It’s this attitude towards music that gets to the heart of the problem: Spotify is first and foremost a tech company rather than a music company. The 42-year-old Swede has a $9.9 billion net worth that was built on the backs of countless artists and musicians, yet he failed to give even a passing mention to the group of people upon whom he certainly built his business empire.
For a tech company, the primary concern is simply ‘the product’. Whether that product is music or AI weapons? It doesn’t matter.
Daniel Ek is both chairman of the world’s largest music streaming platform, and of an AI weapons company. And while he may be stepping down as CEO, he is still very much driving the company. As Ek himself writes, “Let’s be clear, I’m not leaving. I’ll remain deeply involved in the big, defining decisions about our future”.
In this game of musical chairs, Ek is still a core part of the Spotify business. Switching CEO’s doesn’t change the fact that so many problems raised by artists continue to plague the platform. As long as this remains the case, we are likely to continue seeing artists take their music off Spotify.
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