In the past few months, a number of artists have moved to take their music down from Spotify. The list includes Massive Attack, Sylvan Esso, and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, among many others. Lots of those artists cite Spotify founder Daniel Ek's investment in the AI military company Helsing. It can't be easy to take your music down from Spotify, even with the company's paltry royalty payments. When your music isn't on Spotify, you're effectively invisible to a great many listeners. But anyone considering dropping Spotify now has another reason for doing so, since the app is now running recruitment ads for ICE.
As The Independent reports, Spotify users on the free ad-supported tier have recently been getting ads telling them to "fulfill [their] mission and "join the mission to protect America" by joining becoming agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the blatantly evil secret police currently running rampant all across America. Some of the ads reportedly directly target disgruntled cops, saying, "In sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free." YouTube, HBO, Hulu, Pandora, and other streaming services are running similar commercials.
A Spotify spokesman says that the ads are "art of a broad campaign the US government is running across television, streaming, and online channels" and that they don't violate Spotify advertising policies, which presumably means that Spotify has no intention to stop running those ads. The spokesperson does note that users can use the thumbs-up or thumbs-down markings for ads, which would supposedly mean that they could make ICE recruitment ads play a little less often on their own personal feeds. This does not really address the problem.
Obviously, any advertising money is going to have its issues, but how many artists really want their music being used to help the spread of ICE recruitment efforts? Earlier this week, the sister labels Epitaph and ANTI- posted a message calling for Spotify to remove its ICE ads.
The band Thursday made a similar demand.
Expect more of these calls in the weeks ahead.
