Belly Make “DELETE SPOTIFY” Their Spotify Header While Exploring “Difficult” Process To Leave Platform
’90s alt-rock band Belly are among the artists looking to remove their music from Spotify after Neil Young and Joni Mitchell did so as a protest against Joe Rogan’s vaccine misinformation. As Variety reports, the banner and logo on the band’s existing Spotify page now displays a graphic that reads “DELETE SPOTIFY.” The band has been vocal on social media over the last few days about their distaste for the streaming service.
“There are many ways to listen to our music. If you can find a way to avoid supporting a platform like spotify, we say ‘noice job,'” they wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. “Originally Spotiify just hosted content, now they have moved into paying for exclusivity. They are making harmful choices. It’s not about taste, it’s about truth.”
“Why are we still ‘on’ spotify if we dont like them? It’s very complicated,” they continued. “Once you are in it is hard to get out. We are looking at options, but you will see that there are many who oppose spotify policies who are still there, an indicator of just how difficult it is.”
Belly provided the following statement to Variety:
From the start, Spotify’s business model has been to devalue creative work and underpay artists, while lobbying (along with other tech giants) to keep the regulations governing royalty payments hard in their favor and against artists. Turning around and using a big chunk of the money that ought to be distributed to artists to fund, and give a platform to disinformation- disinformation that may well prolong the pandemic and further hurt artists by limiting live-performance options- is finally too much. Yes, we believe in free speech, but we do not believe we have an obligation to help fund deliberate disinformation and doubt sowed to undermine the very notion of a collective, public good (and get underpaid in the process).