What is Daniel Ek actually funding?
The money trail is not complicated. Spotify made Daniel Ek rich; his private investment firm, Prima Materia, put that money to work, and its biggest bet is Helsing, a German defence-tech company founded in 2021 that builds aerial and underwater drones and the AI that steers weapons systems. Prima Materia led Helsing's June 2025 round, which raised 600 million euros and valued the firm at roughly 12 billion dollars. Ek is its chairman. He has also, per Rolling Stone, cashed out 345 million dollars of Spotify stock in the past year.
Why are artists walking now?
Because the man at the top stopped being coy about it. Ek is moving from Spotify CEO to executive chairman, and in a June Financial Times interview he said he is 'not concerned' and '100 per cent convinced that this is the right thing for Europe.' For a lot of musicians, that was the line. Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart put it flatly while pulling the band's catalogue: 'Spotify uses music money to invest in AI war drones.' Massive Attack, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Sylvan Esso have joined the exodus, some deleting their pages, others telling fans to cancel. Helsing, for its part, says its systems are deployed only to European countries defending against Russia in Ukraine, and has called claims that its tech is used in other conflicts misinformation.
The objection is simple: no musician wants their streams underwriting the weapons business, whatever the flag on the drone.
Where does the underground go instead?
This is where house and techno have a head start. The underground never fully trusted Spotify's economics in the first place; Bandcamp, Boomkat, vinyl and direct-to-fan sales have carried this scene for years, and Bandcamp Fridays already funnel money straight to artists with no algorithm in the middle. For an electronic act, leaving Spotify is less a leap than a shrug. The pressure now is on the mid-size names who rely on playlist placement and cannot walk without a plan.
