Massive Attack have become the latest act – and first major-label one – to pull their catalogue from Spotify in protest at founder Daniel Ek investing €600m (£520m) in the military AI company Helsing.
In June, Ek’s venture capital firm Prima Materia led the defence tech firm’s latest funding round. Helsing’s software uses AI technology to analyse sensor and weapons system data from battlefields to inform real-time military decisions. It also makes its own military drone, the HX-2. Ek is also chairman of Helsing.
The band made the announcement at the same time that they signed up to a new initiative, No Music for Genocide, in which a group of more than 400 artists and labels are blocking their music from streaming services in Israel.
In a statement, the band said:
Unconnected to this initiative and in light of the (reported) significant investments by its CEO in a company producing military munition drones and AI technology integrated into fighter aircraft, Massive Attack have made a separate request to our label that our music be removed from the Spotify streaming service in all territories.
In our view, the historic precedent of effective artist action during apartheid South Africa and the apartheid, war crimes and genocide now being committed by the state of Israel renders the No Music for Genocide campaign imperative.
In the separate case of Spotify, 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 funds lethal, dystopian technologies.
Enough is more than enough.
Another way is possible.
A Spotify spokesperson said: “Spotify and Helsing are two totally separate companies.”
They added that Helsing was “not involved in Gaza” and its efforts were “focused on Europe defending itself in Ukraine”.
Helsing said in a statement: “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.”
Massive Attack join Australian psych group King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Canadian post-rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Third Man Records-signed US band Hotline TNT, alternative US group Deerhoof and Manchester band Wu Lyf in removing their music from Spotify as a result of Ek’s investment in Helsing.
Unlike those acts, Massive Attack will not be able to host their music on the widely used alternative Bandcamp, which is only available to acts on independent record labels. After moving to Bandcamp – and making their albums pay-what-you-want, including £0 – King Gizzard’s entire 27-album catalogue took the top 27 spots on the platform.
The No Music for Genocide initiative also includes artists such as MJ Lenderman, Amyl and the Sniffers, Rina Sawayama, Jockstrap, KeiyaA, John Glacier, Erika de Casier, Smerz, Wednesday, Nourished by Time, Mike, Yaeji and Faye Webster. The artists involved either edited their release territories or asked their distributor or label to geo-block their releases.
Massive Attack expanded on their participation in an Instagram post:
In 1991 the scourge of apartheid violence fell from South Africa, aided from a distance by public boycotts, protests, and the withdrawal of work by artists, musicians and actors. Complicity with that state was considered unacceptable. In 2025 the same now applies to the genocidal state of Israel. As of today, there’s a musician’s equivalent of the recently announced @filmworkers4palestine campaign (signed by 4,500 filmmakers, actors, industry workers & institutions) – it can be found @nomusicforgenocide & supports the wider asks of the growing @bds.movement. We’d appeal to all musicians to transfer their sadness, anger and artistic contributions into a coherent, reasonable & vital action to end the unspeakable hell being visited upon the Palestinians hour after hour.
Massive Attack previously formed a syndicate for artists speaking out in support of the Palestinian people alongside Brian Eno, Kneecap and Fontaines DC, to protect musicians from being “threatened into silence or career cancellation” by organisations such as UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which reported Bob Vylan to police for leading a chant of “death to the IDF” at Glastonbury, as well as reporting the BBC for broadcasting the set.
Of the syndicate, Massive Attack told the Guardian: “This collective action is really about offering some kind of solidarity to those artists who are living day after day in a screen-time genocide, but are worried about using their platforms to express their horror at that because of the level of censorship within their industry or from highly organised external legal bodies, terrifying them and their management teams with aggressive legal actions. The intention is clear and obvious: to silence them.”
