Massive Attack walked.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard followed.

Two vastly different bands, one forged in Bristol’s dark trip-hop underground, the other a shape-shifting psych-rock circus from Melbourne, both made the same call: enough is enough.

They’re done feeding the Spotify machine.

Done watching Daniel Ek, the company’s billionaire CEO, pour €600 million into Helsing, a military AI firm building drones and software that turns battlefields into data streams.

They didn’t just take a stance, they took their music.

Massive Attack framed it bluntly: “The hard-earned money of fans and the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately funds lethal, dystopian technologies.” They see a moral burden, an ethical line crossed.

King Gizzard’s Stu Mackenzie put it differently: “Sometimes you just forget that you have free will, you can do whatever you want in these spaces.”

He’s right. We’ve been trained to believe that Spotify is music, that to leave it is to vanish. But maybe that’s the illusion that needs breaking.

Let’s get real.

Spotify isn’t evil incarnate. It’s a business built on access, not ownership. But Daniel Ek didn’t invest his billions into music education, environmental tech, or art therapy. He backed military AI.

It’s an uncomfortable symmetry: artists lose their humanity to algorithms, and soldiers might too.

When Massive Attack say “another way is possible,” they’re not just talking about streaming, they’re talking about what kind of world art should fund.

King Gizzard’s exit was quieter, almost whimsical. They didn’t burn bridges or preach revolution. They just walked out the door, and left the lights on at Bandcamp.

They put all 27 albums, 64 live releases, and three EPs up for “pay what you want.” Free if you’re broke. Generous if you’re not.

That’s not a tantrum; that’s a philosophy.

They’re proving that independence isn’t death, it’s oxygen.

Mackenzie said it best: “You put music at the top of the triangle, and the other things fall on from that.”

That’s the antidote to the Spotify mindset, the one that treats artists as data points, playlists as pipelines, and art as brand collateral.

He’s not chasing virality or followers. He’s chasing truth through sound.

That’s the quiet rebellion: music first, platform second.

Still, let’s not get carried away.
For every King Gizzard or Massive Attack, there are a thousand acts terrified to leave. Spotify is the ocean now, and these are just two drops. You pull your songs and the algorithm doesn’t even flinch.

But movements don’t begin with mass adoption. They begin with moral friction.

They start when artists stop pretending that “neutral” platforms are actually neutral.

The question isn’t whether Spotify collapses tomorrow. It’s whether enough artists start to feel that same itch, that sense of complicity, that awareness that maybe streaming convenience comes at a deeper cost.

Maybe the measure of this movement isn’t who leaves next, but who thinks twice before staying.

Spotify will survive this. It’s too big, too embedded. The algorithm doesn’t care about conscience. But these withdrawals, these deliberate, defiant choices, chip away at the illusion that the creative economy is benign.

Maybe it changes nothing.

Maybe it changes everything.

But here’s what matters, they remembered they could say no.
They remembered that platforms don’t own music, people do.

And that, in itself, might be the start of something bigger.

Because history doesn’t remember the comfortable. It remembers the ones who walked out first.