Elizabeth Weinberg
Sylvan Esso have announced their decision to remove their entire back catalog from Spotify. The duo, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, said in a statement on Tuesday that the decision was based on the platform’s many “glaring flaws” including “directly funds war machines.” Their move coincides with the release of a new single, “WDID,” the first release on their own label, Psychic Hotline.
“As we prepare to release new music, we have to decide what we want to be a part of and what we don’t,” the Sylvan Esso statement reads. “To that end, with Sylvan Esso being on our own label for the first time, we have decided to remove our music from Spotify. While no solution is perfect, we simply can’t continue to put our life’s work in a store that, in addition to all its other glaring flaws, directly funds war machines. Reaching towards the world we all deserve,even though we are not in it yet.”
Sylvan Esso released their self-titled debut album in 2013 with three more albums following; 2017’s What Now, 2020’s Free Love, and No Rules Sandy, released in 2022. The couple married in 2016.
In pulling their music from Spotify, the group join a fast-growing list of artists protesting against the streaming giant and its CEO Daniel Ek’s investment in a military drone tech company. Ek joined the board of Helsing, a defence technology company based in Munich, in 2021 when his investment fund Prima Materia put $116m into the company.
In recent months artists including Deerhoof, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, and Hotline TNT have all removed their music from streaming on Spotify as a form of protest. Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart was among the first artists to join the protest and spoke about his decision with The FADER, saying they won’t allow their music to “murder people for money.”
