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Vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta, At The Drive In, and other musical endeavours recently voiced his disapproval of digital service provider Spotify, as per theprp. Backline, a crisis and mental health support line for musicians, collaborated with Spotify earlier this week to host a mental health and songwriting summit in Nashville, Tennessee. The aforementioned arrangement infuriated Cedric because of Spotify’s contentious financial ties to military technology, as well as its widely criticised royalty payout rates and platforming of controversial people. The following post, which was uploaded via his Instagram story and was aimed at Backline regarding their partnership with Spotify, was seen on Reddit and featured him criticising both companies.
With Spotify? How are we supposed to take you fucking serious? Ain’t nobody at Spotify give a fuck about mental health. Fuck outta hear with this shitty propaganda. This is like forced religious arbitrations with your gremlin abusers. Wake. The. Fuck. Up. While they sit there listening to your humanity, Spotify contributes financially to death of children via military war applications they invest in.
In 2025, there was a significant demonstration against Spotify after it was revealed that Daniel Ek, the company’s co-founder and current executive chairman, had led a $693.6 million fundraising round for Helsing through his venture capital business Prima Materia the previous year. Helsing’s engagement in creating AI-based military applications led to objections to that financing. Many musicians withdrew their music from the Spotify platform in protest of this association alone.
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