Sylvan Esso has made the decision to put their music back on Spotify, after nearly a year of boycotting the streaming service. On Friday, one half of the duo, Amelia Meath, posted a video where she explained how the band’s boycott of Spotify had brought more financial issues than they expected would come from pulling their music from the platform. She explains, “It’s become more and more apparent that if we are going to continue to employ everyone that we employ, it is unsustainable for us not to be on that platform, so we are going to put it back up on there.” She then went on to explain that despite their music returning to the platform, their views that go against Spotify still stand, as she blatantly tells the audience, “I don’t fucking like it, and I’m really frustrated by this reality.”
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Despite returning to the Spotify platform, in Meath’s post, she made sure to point out that this decision did not mean that their music would not be available in its physical form as well as available on sites like Bandcamp. However, with 82% of music streaming being done on Spotify, it seems to be a necessity for musicians to use the platform nowadays.
This comes after Sylvan Esso removed their discography from Spotify in September of 2025. According to Consequence of Sound, the duo made this decision because they did not want their music to “directly funds war machines.” This relates to Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, owning an investment firm called Prima Materia that backs the German defense technology company, Helsing. Other artists to protest this include King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Massive Attack and More.
