Cancel your Spotify subscription

This is old news (old by how fast the world goes).

“Ambitious, ethical, & driven by a mission to help build a thriving society” – that’s rich, knowing that this is about military AI. This has already created a ■■■■■■■■■ among artists and producers. Not only does Spotify pay artists peanuts, but it now uses its gains to fund military technology.
A Spotify subscription is blood money.
But hey, who cares how many people will die as long as we have great playlists, right?

I don’t stop playing peace songs, even on Spotify

Some companies were very early, others followed later and are desperate for government contracts from NATO members.

The Spotify boss (not the company) is off to a late start in helping with reconnaissance with AI technology, which are frontrunners:

That hi-tech companies seek out military contracts is hardly a surprise.
But:

  1. Spotify is hardly a hi-tech company. I will not contribute to the personal wealth of their CEO, given what he does with his money — it’s not exactly as if there were no other investment opportunities.
  2. Google has scotched their plans to work closely with the military.
  3. Microsoft and Amazon are facing fire from their employees.
  4. Apple bought the Siri technology, which has no further links to the military apparatus.

I don’t see myself happily listening to a peace song on Spotify when I KNOW that my subscription money goes towards funding the military-industrial complex.
Sometimes we don’t know what is done with our money, but when we do, and still do not act, but rather prefer to suppress our knowledge, well, what do you call that?

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https://www.shopmyexchange.com/browse/electronics/apple/_/N-103602

One of the shareholders and founders of Spotify gets AI reconnaissance contracts from the German and French governments as part of NATO’s billion-dollar investment. Is this all to remain American technology?

The French in particular prefer to defend themselves.

I can only repeat myself:

As to the links re Apple, they don’t say anything about Apple’s involvement with the military. In any event, we’re talking about Spotify.

Life is full of moral choices, and they define who you are.

By the way, the European industrial-military complex is as rotten and cynical to the core as its American variant. We all know what AI weapons and systems mean — drone strikes.

Therefore, no one should be so naive as to believe that everything runs without technology and knowledge from Apple & Co. We now have just one more private player who believes he is only doing something for national defense.

I’m not saying I’m for any of this military stuff, but it was the military industrial complex that created the internet. Otherwise we’d not be having this forum conversation or streaming music.

The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense,

I understand your position, and I’m certainly not being naive. My problem is that a streaming platform that makes its money by offering content most of which is based on values very different from updating killing software have a CEO who, among hundreds of high-yield investment options, chooses to go down the military path. My taxes already support all sorts of things I don’t like; when it comes to private spending, though, we can all remain moral subjects and make appropriate choices.
Anyway, this thread is in danger of becoming too political. Not the right kind of forum to have a debate on such issues. It is interesting, though, that some of the larger questions relating to streaming platforms are never (or very rarely) broached. Such as the carbon footprint of streaming hi-res files, Roon working best when the server is turned on 24 hours a day, the deleterious effect on attention spans due to playlist listening, the centrality of algorithms in forming (or rather dis-forming) musical taste, quantity over quality and what that does do to a musical education, the fact that some big names garner in all the profits, …

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I am less suspicious of an offerer deal with a NATO member than a secret agreement with China, but that is not why I would cancel Apple Music.

Business double standards, lack of ability to defend itself and much more is not helpful…

Always works out well for them… :joy:

FranceWarTimeFlag

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The internet was an interesting one…a child of the 60s… you had academics who had the know-how for the internet, but lacked the funds. And generally had a pretty deep mistrust of the military. On the other hand you had the government who had the funds but lacked the know how. And had a pretty deep mistrust of the academics. In the end the academics took the money and built the network but in such a way that it was difficult for any entity to “own” it.

:smiley:

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Spotify: ripping off artists to feed the man since 2006. I’ve never had nor never will have a subscription.

Artists boycott Spotify as CEO invests €100m in AI defense tech: “It’s a complete contradiction of our music philosophy”

Artists are taking to social media to call on their fans to unsubscribe from the streaming service.

Ironic, isn”t it. Music artists call for a boycott of Spotify, and yet subscribers to Spotify, people one would expect to support artists over corporate greed monsters, don’t seem to care and shrug off the whole issue as so much Spotify bashing. They’re with Daniel Ek rather than the artists - great lovers of music, I must say.

See the new Netflix Movie “Don’t Look Up.” It’s a commentary on the convenience above all culture we’ve become.