A couple of months ago, Massive Attack announced that they were joining the massive wave of artists removing their catalogs from Spotify, citing CEO Daniel Ek’s investment of $700 million in the AI military startup Helsing. At the time, the duo wrote, “The economic burden that has long been placed on artists is now compounded by a moral & ethical burden, whereby the hard-earned money of fans & the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately funds lethal, dystopian technologies.” But perhaps because Massive Attack were a major-label act, it might not be as simple as announcing that you’re taking your catalog off of Spotify. As of this writing, the group’s music is still available on the service. But it seems that their future music won’t be.
On Instagram today, Massive Attack announced that they’ll release “a cache of work created in the recent past” over the next year. The group’s last proper release was the 2020 EP Eutopia. The new stuff that the group made is coming out on “a new label,” and they want it known that it won’t be on Spotify. Here’s what they wrote:
from next year we will release a cache of work created in the recent past
tracks will be available physically and digitally via a new label
with a spotify exception
