Deadmau5, a Canadian music producer and DJ is considering removing his entire catalog from Spotify following remarks made by the platform's CEO, Daniel Ek. On June 21, 2024, the music producer took to Instagram to address the claims made by Spotify's CEO on May 29, 2024. The CEO had asserted that the cost of creating content is now almost "zero." In his post, the producer suggested these claims are "incorrect."
The Instagram post, which garnered significant attention with over 38,000 likes, featured a comment from a fan expressing their disdain for Spotify. In response, the Deadmau5 hinted at his intention to remove his music catalog from the platform, stating he is "about to pull" his tracks from Spotify:
"I feel that, I'm about to pull my catalog from these f**king vultures, enoughs enough," music producer replied.
Trending
Deadmau5, whose real name is Joel Thomas Zimmerman, has 4,987,224 monthly listeners on Spotify. According to his Spotify account, his most streamed track from 2023, Escape (ft. Hayla), has amassed 116,207,019 streams.
Deadmau5 contemplates pulling music from Spotify following CEO's remarks:
On Friday, Joel Thomas Zimmerman, in an Instagram post, denied the claims of Spotify's CEO and suggested that the cost of creating content was more than 25 years of his life:
"Incorrect. The cost of creating content was 25+ years of my life, and much of those proceeds going to your company, you complete f**king idiot. @spotify," Zimmerman wrote.
In late May 2024, Daniel Ek took to X and claimed that nowadays, things "quickly become obsolete," and people can share an "incredible amount of content" on Spotify:
"Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life. While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries," Ek wrote.
The CEO further wrote that the enduring ideas produced might have a short shelf life in the music industry. He concluded the tweet with a question: will today's creation be valued years after today?:
"Also, what are we creating now that will still be valued and discussed hundreds or thousands of years from today?" Ek concluded.
The remarks of Daniel Ek garnered significant attention online, with many showing dissatisfaction with the CEO. One countered back, suggesting that "music will be valued but Spotify will not" on X:
"Music will still be valued in a hundred years. Spotify won't. It will only be remembered as a bad example of a parasitic tool for extracting value from other peoples music. (or "content" as some grifters like to call it) AI will seal your fate," commented a netizen on X.
On June 26, 2024, Dean Wilson, Deadmau5's manager, told Billboard that he has long been asserting that artists, their managers, and intellectual property owners have enabled these multi-billion-dollar companies to build platforms using their art:
"I've been saying for a long time that we, as the IP owners, the artists, the artist managers, and the major record companies, have allowed these multibillion-dollar companies to build platforms and companies with our art and our fans, and now we're locked out," Wilson said.
He further added suggesting that DSPs like Spotify, the artists, and individuals who build art cannot connect to their fans and reflected royalty rates and data, said that they get the bare minimum in return:
"We can't talk to our fans on the platform with the art we've built... Then how much data do we get back in return? The bare minimum they can give you. Ask me today, 'How much am I getting paid per stream on Spotify?' I don't know. And that's our job," Wilson told Billboard.
According to Billboard, in April reports, Spotify reported a 20% increase in revenue and a gross profit of 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion). This helped return the 18-year-old streaming company to profitability and put those companies on track to meet Spotify's growth target in 2024.
Neither Spotify nor Daniel Ek has yet responded to Deadmau5's remarks.
