What If We All Pulled Our Music?
It’s not hyperbole to describe Spotify’s new terms as a tool of white supremacy. French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser coined the term “ideological state apparatuses” to describe how institutions like the media, our education systems, religion, and culture maintain the power of the ruling class through the reproduction of ideas in service of the state. Culture is not neutral; it is one of the primary ways ideology is shaped, enforced, and reinscribed.
Music, perhaps more so than any other cultural form, reflects this tension. It has always been both a site of resistance and a tool of control. The same systems that rely on Black creativity to survive e.g. record labels and streaming platforms, are the same systems that exploit, underpay, and silence the artists who not only sustain them but are the reason they exist. Without artists, they could not exist.
Spotify’s new artist terms are a contemporary example of cultural ideological state apparatus at work. The new terms grant Spotify a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license” to use, modify, distribute, and even create derivative works from artists’ content. In plain terms, Spotify can reproduce our likeness, our art, and our voices, using them to train AI or market its products without consent, compensation, or credit.
As Black women artists, we are witnessing yet another evolution of the same colonial logic that has always sought to extract from us: our sound, our image, our labour, our essence. Timberland’s recent launch of an AI “artist” performing digital blackface is a chilling indication of what is to come, a new frontier of exploitation masquerading as technological innovation.
This is not progress. This is erasure. This is violence.
When platforms like Spotify demand ownership of our likeness, our sound, and even our moral rights, they are not building a future for artists. They are codifying our disposability.
On a personal note, as one half of the neo-soul electronic duo MVM, it is demoralising to create against this backdrop. To pour ourselves into our work knowing that, at any moment, a corporation can lay claim to the very thing that gives us meaning, our artistic vision, our voices, and our image.
In an industry where a Black woman artist can have her entire music video concept copied, pasted, and applied to a non-Black K-pop artist, as in the recent case of Yseult, whose entire visual concept was stolen, the message is clear. RTSTLabel’s response, claiming the production proceeded without “any prior awareness that a similar work existed due to a reliance on the music video storyboard,” rings hollow. The work was not similar; it was a replica. Far be it from me to conclude, but it is highly suspicious that they would have seen a moodboard and not known the music video existed.
Where is the collective call to action led not by small, seemingly insignificant independent artists, but by those who already hold the power and influence? What if we all decided to pull our music from these platforms? What if we worked in tandem to create a more equitable industry? What if we stopped operating from a place of scarcity? What if we decided to take back ownership of what is ours?
As artists, we should be enraged by the mockery of our existence, by the mockery of the sacred gifts bestowed upon us to share and serve one another. The question is no longer whether these systems exploit us, but how long we will continue to participate in our own erasure.
