Why Current Will Not Be on Spotify

On leaving Spotify behind and choosing platforms that better serve artists

When I began making Current, I knew it had to move differently.

This album was recorded around water, on and around my 1951 Dutch sailboat, De Vouw. It carries the sound of wind, wood, locks, birds, waves, voice, electronics, and the slow intelligence of moving with nature instead of against it. Current is about listening. It is about flow. It is about the fragile relationship between people, place, memory, and the living world around us.

So when it came time to decide where this music should live, I had to ask myself a simple question: how do I present it to the world? What platform should it be on?

For me, with Spotify, the answer is no.

I know this is not the convenient choice. Spotify is where many people expect to find music. It is easy, fast, and everywhere. But that is also part of the problem. Convenience has trained us to forget what music actually is: not background content, not data, not filler for an algorithm, but a human creation, someone put their heart and soul into it.

For years, artists have spoken about how streaming has made music feel cheaper and more disposable. A song can travel around the world, be played thousands of times, and still generate very little for the artist who made it. That is already difficult to accept. But recently, the ethical discomfort has become much larger for me.

Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder and executive chairman, is also connected through his investment firm Prima Materia to Helsing, a European defense technology company working with artificial intelligence and military systems. In 2025, Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round for Helsing, a company reported to be expanding into drones, aircraft, and submarines. I am not alone in this discomfort. Artists such as Massive Attack, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sylvan Esso, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and others have also spoken out or removed music from Spotify. Many of these artists come from independent, experimental, and politically conscious music communities, which makes this feel less like an isolated gesture and more like part of a wider artist-led refusal. In the independent music world I come from, this question feels especially relevant. I think about artist-led communities around musicians like Michael League and Snarky Puppy, where the focus has always been on musicianship, collaboration, live performance, and building a real audience outside the usual industry machine.

I do not want an album about water, listening, connection, and care to be part of a system that feels so far removed from those values.

So Current will not be released on Spotify.

Instead, I am choosing Bandcamp and I am also excited to announce that I’m also on Subvert!

Bandcamp has been one of the few online spaces where independent music still feels personal. I’ve been there since 2012 and made many friends through it. It lets an album be more than a stream. It can be a download, a physical edition, a note from the artist, a gift, a collection, or a small archive. On Bandcamp, people do not just “consume” a track. They can choose to support it, own it, and return to it. For Current, that matters. This album comes with maps, stories, field recordings, handmade details, and a sense of place, so I want it to live somewhere that allows the whole world around the music to be visible.

Subvert is a new artist-owned, cooperative music platform built as an alternative to the current streaming model. Instead of treating music as endless background content, it is designed around ownership, community, and a more direct relationship between artists and listeners. Subvert describes itself as a cooperative music marketplace owned by artists, labels, supporters, and workers, with members helping to shape and govern the platform.

What I love about Subvert is that it does not feel like just another tech platform trying to “solve” music from the outside. It feels like musicians, listeners, labels, and independent communities asking a much better question: what if the people who actually care about music were the ones shaping the place where it lives? That is exciting to me. Subvert feels less like a streaming machine and more like a gathering place. It has the spirit of an independent record store, a co-op, a zine table, and a music community all at once. For an album like Current, which was built around slowness, attention, water, friendship, and shared listening, that feels much more alive than disappearing into an algorithm.

I am not looking for a perfect platform. I am looking for a more honest relationship. I want listeners to know that when they buy the album, they are directly supporting the work, the musicians, the recording process, the physical editions, the concerts, and the next impossible idea. I want the exchange to feel human again.

Bandcamp has already offered that kind of relationship for many independent artists. Subvert takes that idea even further by asking what would happen if the people making and supporting the music also had a voice in the platform itself.

That feels aligned with Current.

This album was never meant to be consumed passively. It was made through attention. It asks for attention. It comes with maps, field recordings, stories, handmade details, and a sense of place. It is not just a collection of tracks. It is a world.

I understand that some listeners may be disappointed that they cannot simply search for it on Spotify. I get that. But I also believe that every now and then we have to stop and ask what we are standing for.

For me, this is one of those moments.

Choosing not to release Current on Spotify is not just a protest. It is also an invitation. An invitation to listen differently. To buy music again. To treat albums as art objects, as letters, as landscapes, as living things. To support platforms that are trying to build something healthier for artists and listeners.

Current is about the movement of water, but also about the movement of choices. Where we place our work matters. Where we place our money matters. Where we place our attention matters.

This album is my way of following the current I believe in.

P.s. get my album on vivienne.bandcamp.com or follow me on Subvert