That’s exactly what Belly did, independently of their music’s rights holder, which ironically is Warner Music for all of Belly’s albums except its most recent studio album (Warner also holds the rights to most of Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s catalogs and have removed all of the titles the company controls from Spotify, at the artists’ request). Yes, we believe in free speech, but we do not believe we have an obligation to help fund deliberate disinformation and doubt sowed to undermine the very notion of a collective, public good (and get underpaid in the process).” The band directs those “interested in learning more” about their position to the Union of Musicians’ Justice at Spotify campaign and the Songwriters of North America website.Īs for how the image appeared on Spotify, although rights-holders, usually a record label, control the uploading of music to Spotify, artists often can control the imagery that goes with their pages on the platform through the Spotify for Artists portal. Turning around and using a big chunk of the money that ought to be distributed to artists to fund, and give a platform to disinformation- disinformation that may well prolong the pandemic and further hurt artists by limiting live-performance options- is finally too much.
In a statement to Variety, the members of Belly said: “From the start, Spotify’s business model has been to devalue creative work and underpay artists, while lobbying (along with other tech giants) to keep the regulations governing royalty payments hard in their favor and against artists. UPDATED: As the Spotify-Neil Young-Joe Rogan controversy continued to rage on Saturday amid a firestorm of criticism toward the streaming giant, an image reading “Delete Spotify” appeared on Spotify’s own platform in a very unexpected place: the homepage of the ‘90s alt-rock band Belly - and only on desktop, not on phones.Ī rep for Spotify did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.
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