Race to the bottom.

Who knows how this ends...The Spotify Shitshow rages on.

I’m sitting here looking at a picture of a young man with his head in his hands, looking over a levelled section of the Gaza Strip, it’s actually an Instagram post from the great singer-songwriter Cat Stevens. His caption for the photo in bold all caps says “Do Something”. Like so many, I feel helpless when I see these images.

I was shocked and appalled, when I read the news last week, that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had used money earned through Spotify, through the streams of music from artist like you and me to invest $600 million into a weapons Tech company. sacred songs that heal the world, that lift up so many out of the darkness that we are constantly surrounded by lately, have been weaponized against our brothers and sisters across the world.

The fact that Daniel Ek used our beautiful art (whilst paying a pittance in royalty rates to the artist that populate his platform) to invest in bomb carrying drone technology, already being used in the theatre of war, is morally and spiritually abhorrent. I would like to say it’s inconceivable, but we know that isn’t the case anymore. We are living out some sort of dystopian nightmare, directed by an immoral cabal of Tech-Bro’s.

I understand that not all Art is made to be sacred and some Art likely glorifies war and violence. Mine does not.

I don’t and haven’t always gotten it right with my morality or my art but I feel called to actually “Do something”

Problem is, my thinking is paralyzed right now.

An email I received from a new fan in Australia about a year ago sticks out in my mind.

He had heard one of my songs on Spotify and it had “stopped him from doing a very bad thing” and instead got himself into treatment.

My song saved a life via Spotify… Jesus.

I have more thinking and sitting with this to do, so for now. All profits we make from Spotify this year, will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

It’s the smallest gesture in a sea of hurt right now, but I cannot do nothing. I have to do “Something”

I would like nothing more to say fuck it, pull it all down. But that email hangs over my heart like a floating silver dagger.

I wish we could do better.

I wish I could see the path better, but it’s very dark right now.

If I am to be true to my muse and the things I sing about, I have to find some sort of integrity in the business I conduct.

P.S. We had a family meeting and we all have cancelled our Spotify accounts in favour of TIDAL or Apple Music.

Yours truly in spirit and art,

Leeroy Stagger

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