Which artists and labels formally removed music from Spotify over the ICE ads and Daniel Ek’s investments?
Executive summary
A wave of artists and some labels publicly requested or carried out removals of music from Spotify in 2025 in protest both of ICE recruitment advertisements and of Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s investment ties to the German defence AI company Helsing; named acts that have formally pulled music or said they asked labels/distributors to remove it include Massive Attack, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hotline TNT and others, while labels such as ANTI- and Epitaph publicly called for the ICE ads to be removed [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Who explicitly pulled music — the list reported by multiple outlets
Major outlets and industry roundups repeatedly list a core group of artists who publicly removed music from Spotify in 2025: Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu announced they were taking their catalogues down [2] [5], King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard said they removed their music [2], Massive Attack formally requested removal from its label to have their music taken off Spotify in all territories [1] [6], Godspeed You! Black Emperor departed around the same time reports of Ek’s Helsing investment went public [7] [3], and smaller acts such as Hotline TNT were also named as having removed music in response to the controversy [1] [3].
2. Labels and imprints that acted or protested
Beyond individual artists, established indie labels publicly pushed back: ANTI- and Epitaph called on Spotify to stop running ICE recruitment ads and joined the wider indie community’s objections, a formal statement that positioned labels as organizational critics rather than simply individual artists [4], and other outlets noted that certain labels and distributor actions — including geo‑blocking territories — were used to carry out removals [1].
3. What artists said motivated their exits — ads, investments, or both
Artists cited two overlapping grievances: objection to Spotify running ICE recruitment adverts and objection to Ek’s financial involvement with Helsing, a defence AI company — Massive Attack framed its request around Ek’s Helsing investment and aligned with a separate “No Music for Genocide” initiative, while many artists explicitly linked their decisions to not wanting streaming revenue to be connected to military AI or to ICE recruitment placement [1] [8] [9].
4. How removals were executed and the limits of “leaving Spotify”
The mechanics varied: some artists asked labels or distributors to geo‑block or remove territories, others pulled independently held masters or removed only the music they control, and some bands moved catalogs to platforms like Bandcamp when possible and feasible — Massive Attack’s label status complicated a full Bandcamp move, while bands with independent releases often used distributors to edit release territories [1] [7] [10].
5. Scale, ambiguity and the role of mixed messaging
The boycott movement grew to include hundreds or even thousands of signatories around initiatives like No Music for Genocide, but reporting also shows confusion: some statements mingled objections to both the ICE ads and Helsing investments, which fueled misinterpretations about where Helsing’s technology was being used; investigative reporting cautions that conflation of separate issues amplified the protests but also spread inaccurate causal claims about the company’s battlefield deployments [9] [1].
6. What this list does — and does not — prove
The named artists and labels above represent those repeatedly reported as having formally removed or requested removal of music from Spotify over the ICE ads and Ek’s investments, but public lists vary by outlet and by how “removal” is defined (full catalog removal, territory edits, or selecting only tracks artists control), so the compilation is reliable for the high‑profile names cited across multiple sources but not a comprehensive registry of every act that acted in this movement [7] [2] [3].