Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you are doing well. Today, I wanted to address a pretty, at least for me, significant and slightly jaw-dropping announcement that I caught on social media, and that is the legendary experimental band Xiu Xiu will be removing their catalog from the Spotify platform. I saw this announced through their Instagram page, where they let their the audience know what was going to happen. It's a decision that was clearly influenced by recent news that came out about Spotify and it's CEO Daniel Ek investing millions and millions of dollars into deadly military tech. In fact, he seems focused on ingraining himself in this industry more than he does the music industry right now. So, I wanted to invite the band's main brain, Jamie Stewart, on to discuss this decision.

Anthony: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you guys are not the only seminal band from the indie scene to do and announce the same. Recently, Deerhoof made a similar move as well. I mean, obviously, you guys have collaborated over the years, too, so shout out to them as well for this conversation.

But what drove you personally to make this pretty huge change that despite all the negative headlines and discourse we've been seeing around Spotify in recent years, most musicians have just not really been able to be willing to make the same jump that you guys have just taken?

Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu: We wanted to for a long time. I mean, I've never been a fan of streaming. It devalues music, generally. I mean, it makes music disposable. And we talked to our various labels and tried to get off Spotify a few years ago, and no one really wanted to do it. I mean, the reason for us at the time was just we thought that they'd just treated bands badly. But when the announcement came that this Spotify head, Daniel Ek, was using Spotify funds to directly invest in AI war murder drones, there was no conceivable way that we could be involved in something like that.

And now he's on the board of that company, he's on the floor.

Yeah. They're using money that they have essentially, for all intents and purposes, stolen from almost every band in the entire world to murder people to make more money. Us being off of Spotify is not going to make any real financial impact for them. It really has more to do with our conscience, and hopefully for the small number of people interested in Xiu Xiu, possibly to encourage them just to be aware of this issue and not to, in some small way, fund on the murder of what will undoubtedly be brown people all over the world, so a small number of white billionaires can make some more money.

You said a few years ago, and obviously not trying to necessarily point anybody specifically out or anything like that, you guys have worked with a lot of different people and organizations over the years to release your music. But you talked about recently wanting to and expressing interest in removing your catalog from the Spotify platform, but seeing some pushback in resistance to that. Was this recent news the straw that broke the camel's back that made you guys able to be like, "Hey, listen, this seems like too big a deal?"

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, the pushback we got from our labels, they were just like, "Yeah, it sucks, but it's just bands lost the fight against streaming for a brief period." We thought, "Oh, maybe we could fight against streaming," but we can't. Technology and the shitty platform won. There's nothing we can do about it. Whatever. I don't think about it anymore. I just make music. I accept that we lost this battle. But when the battle is a literal battle that has to do with murdering people, our labels were just like, "yes, it is completely fine not to be involved in this." We don't want to be involved in this. It's easier for bands to do it than it is for labels to do it. But other than that there's some technical aspects. We've been trying to do it since the announcement came up, but there's been some technical BS. It's taking a little bit longer, which is the reason why we announced it today. We've been reposting things about it a lot, and especially the things that Jaref have been doing, and people have been saying, "Okay, you're talking about it."

When are you going to do it?

We just wanted to say we're working on it, we're trying to do it just to let people know that we are aware of this. We're not just making some empty platitudes. We're in the process of doing it. It's taking longer than we want. It should be sorted out, hopefully by the beginning of next week.

For anybody who's not in the know, are there any difficulties associated with that due to the fact that just up until this point, the Xiu Xiu discography has grown to be so massive and so strong?

It's mostly that. It's mostly that it's spread out between three main labels, but there's also smaller ones. I think it's not going to be possible for us to get some of the smaller records off. I don't know who even owns them. I don't know how they got there. We certainly have nothing to do with them being on there. We have a record called The Creepshow that's on what was forever a small, tiny label called States Rights that's been gone since 2012. I don't even know who I would talk to about that. Some very small records may not be able to get out there, but our main full releases. It's just coordinating between everybody. Stuff like that is just a hassle, but everybody's working on it.

What do you feel like this change may entail for the band going forward from here? We hear from groups with your experience that the payouts and the financial impact of this is probably going to be pretty small. But in your experience over the past 10+ years, has Spotify been at all vital in terms of, at the very least, spreading word about the band or making people aware of them?

To tell you the truth, we've made a not insignificant amount of money from Spotify. I'm not going to be houseless because of it, but for us, we're losing a fair amount of money by doing it. But there's no amount of money that would make us want to participate in a company that was actively just trying to murder people. We're not a big enough band that we can just count on things being fine all the time. Sometimes things are well, sometimes they go poorly, and we're just very fervent with our money regardless. So what we know we'll be making money for is something we've dealt with many, many times before. Other than that, like I said, when bands lost streaming, we just said, "Okay, fuck it. We'll just make records. We can't think about it anymore." It's the same thing. We're just going to make the best records we can possibly make, play the best shows we can possibly make. There'll be some other fucking annoying technology to have to deal with. At some point, we will press on and just do the best we can.

You talk a little bit about some of the discourse that was happening around you guys and engaging with what Deerhoof did, obviously the same with the removal of their music from the platform. Has this also been responded to in any way from behind the scenes of your peers saying, "I'm considering doing the same thing"? Do you feel like there could potentially be a domino effect in the coming months or anything?

I really hope so. I mean, it's none of my business how people choose to promote or not promote their music. I hope that peers that we have choose to remove themselves from this. But for us, it was a very easy decision. This thing has always been an easy decision for us. For other people, it's not. There's a million reasons why it is or it isn't. The thing I really hope is that people stop subscribing. We might have a minuscule impact on that. I hope that we do. But I hope as people begin to think about this more and more, that maybe bands that could actually have a big impact will take their music off of it. And then perhaps a significant number of people could remove their subscriptions from the platform. I really don't have a lot of hope about it really negatively affecting Spotify or any actions that they take. It really just has more to do with our own music. This is going to make me sound very, very, very corny. Music is, and there's no other word for it, sacred to us. We don't want it to be shit on by war mongering billionaires.

At this point, you're not subject to the specific legalese in the contracts and contractual obligations of every musician out there, obviously. But do you feel like what's keeping some other people from making the same decision is more of a personal choice or are there a lot of musicians who are locked into these agreements where they have to be on Spotify because their label wants them to be there, essentially? I'm sure you guys are in the position where you have the leeway to say to your label, "We would prefer to be this way"?

Very, very fortunately for us, the labels that we work on are genuinely independent and have always had a political bend. Kill Rock Stars, Polyvinyl, and Graveface are the labels that we work with. We're really, really lucky in that regard. It may have as much to do with the distributors that labels have. There may be labels who want to remove their entire catalog from Spotify, but their distributors won't allow them to. I'm sure that for every band and for every label, there is a tremendous amount of legal complications to do it. We're in a fortunate position where that doesn't impact us, but I'm sure it does for a lot of medium to bigger bands.

Looking forward from this point in a more broad sense, I do understand the validity behind what you're saying in terms of bands losing and much of the ground gained or lost in the streaming battle being set in stone at this point. But in your view, is this due to just a general devaluation that you were alluding to earlier because there's just so much music out there? Or is the money that's being generated just not going to the artist? Because as we're seeing with Daniel, it seems like a lot of people are making money. The labels are making more money than ever. The execs are making more money than ever. The stocks are going crazy. There are certain artists who certainly seem to benefit very much off of this model. But then there's almost this separated, lower class of musician who is essentially cut out of the success that everyone else seems to be seeing who's rising toward the top.

I think it's both of those things. I think the financial issue is a little bit different than the musical issue. The financial issue is exactly that. All of the streaming platforms pay a remarkable pittance for the number of plays. When I said that we make an actual decent amount of money from Spotify, even then, when I think about if they even paid one penny, we would make literally 50 times more for one penny for a play. So bands lost because of the financial aspect of it. When we started, the amount of money that you make selling physical records is exponentially more than the amount of money you make from streaming. And that happens a little bit now, but not that much. So there's that financial aspect of it. The other way that bands and music fans lost is that because streaming is more or less free, you have access to everything. There's just significantly less focus on actually listening to and loving music. If you can listen to anything you want all the time for free, if something is uninteresting to you after three seconds, you don't give it any attention.

Interesting, in-depth, curious, challenging music takes time to focus on. Music has definitely not gotten better, and I'm saying this as a music fan since I was a child. Streaming doesn't make music better. Streaming makes music have to be commercial in order for it to potentially grab somebody's attention. If something is not meaningful to you, if you don't have to focus on it, then it can't... This again is so corny, but it can't touch your heart. You cannot get what music can possibly give you if you can just zap through it. If it doesn't require you to focus on it, it doesn't have any value. You didn't have to go get it. It was handed to you for free. Nine trillion songs were handed to you for free. It's overwhelming. You can't love something like that. It can't affect your life in the way that music has the capability to do.

I know this is corny, sorry.

No, I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I mean, if anybody thinks it's corny, it's probably some guy who's much more corny than either of us in chat or something.

I guess the last thing I'll say is, and maybe this is more of a statement than a question that you could put your own two cents in on, but I'm starting to feel like streaming platforms are creating a musical and a media homogenization that is like that of the radio monopolies of the late '90s and the 2000s, and it's making it more difficult to be exposed to anything that's like of any emotional or intellectual substance or significance, which obviously greatly informed the way the underground operated at the time with the necessity for this network of smaller labels and pipelines through which artists could actually get their art out there who weren't actually able to function in the mainstream radio market of the day. Do you foresee potentially an indie or an underground movement in the future that sees its, I guess, opportunities outside of the Spotify space entirely because it just becomes too hostile of an environment to actually promote or share your music through?

I genuinely hope so. The '90s were an interesting time. I mean, college radio was remarkable and a reaction exactly to AOR radio. I really hope that something like that happens. I mean, it's just a matter of as an individual, as a music fan, and as someone who's trying to be ethical in the world, you have to make a decision. If you own 10 CDs, you can really devote yourself to those 10 CDs and really get a lot of focus out of them. It is so much more meaningful to focus on something and really devote yourself to something than having 20 billion songs that are just uningestible. There's no way to do that. Becoming involved with something as unethical, and genuinely at this point there's no other word to use other than Daniel Ek is doing something evil. Involving yourself in doing something evil, it takes an individual decision not to be involved in that, and to choose to be a music fan in another way.