A few weeks ago King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took essentially their whole catalog off Spotify, condemning CEO Daniel Ek's investment in AI military drone technology and declaring, "Fuck Spotify." Today, bandleader Stu McKenzie has elaborated on the band's stance in a new interview.
Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, McKenzie says anti-Spotify sentiment was already a constant refrain within the band: "We’ve been saying fuck Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented." He doesn't consider himself an activist, and although he hesitates to hinder access to King Gizzard's music, removing the band from the world's biggest streaming platform was about "staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about." He sees this move as a continuation of the band's tradition of risk-taking and unconventional release strategies:
As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that, because that’s not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes. I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that. In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I’m just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us.
I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we’ve released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together. I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you’ll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive. It feels like an experiment to me, like, “Let’s just go away from Spotify, and let’s see what happens.” Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.
In the interview, McKenzie also discusses playing a residency in a Lithuanian prison, translating King Gizzard's new orchestral album Phantom Island to the road, and more. You can read the full thing here.
