2025 will likely go down in history as a particularly bad PR year for Spotify. We’ve known for seemingly ages now that the world’s most popular streaming platform pays artists fractions of pennies, but that rift between artists and the company’s head honchos grew exponentially this year after news broke in June that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had invested nearly $700 million via his own venture capital firm into Helsing, a German company that develops AI military software. (Ek is also the chairman of Helsing.) As if that wasn’t enough, in October Spotify also began running ICE recruitment ads for listeners on their free subscription tier, and addressed the backlash by saying that it did not violate their company advertising policies.
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