Spotify, a company which is fairly famously not even an American-HQd enterprise (it’s Swedish), is giving me ever more reason to rant about its malign influence.
They too donated to Trump’s inauguration. Not as much as the bigger, equally irresponsible, US tech billionaires, sure. But, rabid self-interested politics and basic human ethics aside, I’m sure it still feels like a $150,000 kick in the teeth for, amongst others, the musicians that allow it to exist in the first place - especially given its notorious ungenerousness to the folks that allow it to exist.
Björk, for other reasons, also recently expressed a non-too favourable opinion of the company, telling a Swedish newspaper that it is:
…probably the worst thing that has happened to musicians. The streaming culture has changed an entire society and an entire generation of artists.