About a year ago Sylvan Esso took their catalogue off Spotify, in protest at founder Daniel Ek's investment in the military defence contractor Helsing. The North Carolina duo said at the time that they could not keep their life's work in a store that funds war machines. This week it all went back up.
Amelia Meath explained the reversal in a to-camera post on the band's Instagram. A year away had felt good, she said, and had also been hard in ways they expected and hard in ways they had not predicted. What settled it was payroll. "It is unsustainable for us to not be on that platform," she said, if the band are going to keep employing everyone they employ.
She was careful to separate the decision from the argument behind it. She and her bandmate and husband Nick Sanborn have not changed their minds, she said. "We do not want to support the business of war," she said. She would rather people did not stream the records there at all, and she signed off with Free Palestine. The band still believe the original decision was right and say they cannot work out how to sustain it.
One figure explains the bind. Meath put 82 per cent of streaming on Spotify, which is the reason a boycott by one independent act costs the act far more than it costs the platform. A band can refuse the store, but a band with staff on a payroll cannot refuse four fifths of the market indefinitely.
The timing sharpens it. Sylvan Esso released their fifth album, Ow, the previous Friday, their first through Psychic Hotline, the label they run themselves, having debuted on Partisan back in 2014. It went out everywhere except Spotify and is now there too, which means the record they made as an independent statement had its first week split in half by the decision.
Meath's caption pointed anyone who wants an alternative at Bandcamp, Qobuz, Subvert and local record shops, and the album is on the band's own Bandcamp page. We covered the record's first single when On & On arrived in August. The rest of our coverage from this end of the genre is on the indie hub and the electronic hub.
The facts
- Sylvan Esso have put their catalogue back on Spotify after a year away.
- They removed it over Daniel Ek's investment in defence contractor Helsing.
- Amelia Meath says staying off the platform is unsustainable if they keep their team.
- She says her and Nick Sanborn's political views have not changed.
- Meath puts 82 per cent of streaming on Spotify.
- Their fifth album Ow came out the previous Friday on their own Psychic Hotline label.
- The band debuted on Partisan in 2014.
- Meath pointed listeners to Bandcamp, Qobuz, Subvert and record shops instead.
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