Spotify

There you are, sitting in traffic in your car, listening to Taylor Swift on Spotify because it’s easier than subjecting yourself to a new, more challenging artist. An ad pops up in your stream. It’s serious stuff, evidenced by the dystopian tone of the narrator: “Join the mission to protect America,” the serious man’s voice commands, “with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now … and fulfill your mission.”

It’s an Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruitment ad, part of the Trump administration’s investment of $30 billion to add more than 10,000 deportation officers to its ranks by the end of the year. You would have been spared the outrage if only you had paid for Spotify’s ad-free tier of service, but there’s no way the audio streamer is getting your money now. You’ll be switching to, say, Apple Music. Maybe Tidal?

The experience of being subjected to recruitment ads for a domestic military force, assembled by a power-hungry president, has generated intense backlash that’s culminated this week in calls for boycotts of streaming services and platforms that have featured ICE spots. They include Pandora, ESPN, YouTube, Hulu and Fubo TV. Multiple HBO Max subscribers bemoaned on X that they were subjected to ICE recruitment videos while watching All Elite Wrestling: “Time to be force-fed ICE commercials against my will for two hours again #WWENXT,” @YKWrestling wrote.

Recruitment ads — Uncle Sam’s “I Want You” poster comes to mind — are an American staple, especially in times of war. But the current recruitment effort is aimed at sending forces into American cities, predicated on exaggerated claims that U.S. metro areas are under siege and in peril due to dangerous illegal immigrants, leftist protesters and out-of-control crime rates. The data, however, does not support those claims. The American Immigration Council found that from 1980 to 2022, while the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled (from 6.2% to 13.9%), the total crime rate declined by over 60%.

Yet there’s a far scarier doomscape on the horizon if ICE’s recruitment efforts are successful: a mercenary army loyal only to Trump, weaponized to keep him on the throne. If that sounds more dystopian than the aforementioned Spotify ad, consider that the administration has spent more than $6.5 million over the past month on a slew of 30-second commercials aimed at luring in police officers.

The ads aired on TVs in more than a dozen cities including Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta and opened with images of each specific metro area’s skyline. Then came the commanding narration: “Attention, Miami law enforcement!” It’s followed by the same messaging that is used in ICE ads across the country: “You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city, safe. But in sanctuary cities you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free — Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst. Drug traffickers. Gang members. Predators.”

But are the ads working? It’s hard to say since transparency isn’t a hallmark of the MAGA White House. For what it’s worth, a Sept. 16 press release from the DHS claimed that it had received more than 150,000 applications in response to its campaign and had extended 18,000 tentative job offers.

As for the power of consumer-led boycotts, there’s hope. More than 1.7 million Disney, Hulu and ESPN subscriptions were reportedly canceled between Sept. 17 and Sept. 23 during Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary suspension by ABC (Disney is ABC’s parent company). The network pulled the show after the host’s comments related to Charlie Kirk’s assassination angered MAGA supporters and the Trump-appointed FCC chair appeared to threaten the network. But after a week with a significant increase in cancellations — a 436% jump compared to a normal week — Kimmel was back on the air.

As of today, Spotify appears unmoved by the pressure to pull those intrusive ICE ads. “This advertisement is part of a broad campaign the US government is running across television, streaming, and online channels,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement this week. “The content does not violate our advertising policies. However, users can mark any ad with a thumbs up or thumbs down to help manage their ads preferences.”

Thumbs down. Frowny emoji. Cue the dystopian narrator for a counter ad: “Join the mission to protect America: Cancel Spotify.”

Spotify video podcasts are coming to Netflix, further diversifying the types of content on the Los Gatos, Calif.-based streaming service beyond movies, TV shows and games.

The move reflects how many people are consuming their podcasts not just by listening, but by watching the podcasters conduct their discussions on video.

Roughly 70% of podcast listeners prefer their shows with video, according to a Cumulus Media study. Netflix and Spotify said the partnership will bring podcasts to Netflix that complement the streamer’s “existing programming and unlocks new audiences and wider distribution for the shows.”

There will be 16 Spotify video podcasts initially on Netflix in the U.S. in early 2026, with plans to include other markets, the companies said. Those video podcasts include sports programs like “The Bill Simmons Podcast” and “The Ringer Fantasy Football Show,” culture/lifestyle podcasts like “The Dave Chang Show” and “The Recipe Club” as well as true-crime programs like “Serial Killers.”

“At Netflix, we’re always looking for new ways to entertain our members, wherever and however they want to watch,” said Lauren Smith, the streamer’s vice president of content licensing and programming strategy.

Roman Wasenmüller, vice president and head of podcasts at Spotify, said this partnership helps creators reach new audiences and unlocks “a completely new distribution opportunity.”

Spotify began offering video podcasts on its platform about five years ago, offering an option to its podcasters who had previously been posting videos of their audio programs on YouTube.

Last year, the Swedish audio company unveiled new features that make it easier for creators to earn money from their video content and track their performance on the streaming service.

Netflix has also been diversifying the types of content it offers on its streaming service. Last week, Netflix unveiled a slate of games, such as versions of Boggle and Pictionary, that can be played on TV and are included with its streaming subscription.

Showgirl breaks Spotify records as Taylor Swift’s most pre-saved album, highlighting her enduring popularity.

Taylor Swift has dropped her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, and already, it is the most pre-saved album ever on the Spotify streaming platform.

Showgirl even broke the record set last year by none other than Swift’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department.

The 35-year-old artist reunited with Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback for her hotly anticipated collection of bouncy pop songs.

“Tonight all these lives converge here, the mosaics of laughter and cocktails of tears … I can’t tell you how proud I am to share this with you, an album that just feels so right,” Swift posted on Instagram after the album’s release, along with photos of her in showgirl outfits.

The megastar described the album as a “self-portrait” and thanked Martin and Shellback, adding: “If you thought the big show was wild, perhaps you should come and take a look behind the curtain,” referring to her record-shattering Eras Tour.

The 12 tracks reveal a lighter, happier Swift – in love with her NFL Super Bowl champion fiance, Travis Kelce, and happy to have bought back her music catalogue.

Ahead of release, Swift said the new album “comes from the most infectiously joyful, wild, dramatic place I was in in my life”.

Fans will be combing through the lyrics and liner notes for “Easter eggs” – coded words and phrases that could reveal things about Swift’s life or future projects.

You hear that?

Spotify announced Wednesday that Lossless Listening, its newest audio format, is available for premium users in select countries, including the U.S.

Lossless audio files allow for listeners to stream music using the least compressed and highest resolution audio formats can have, the company said.

Previously, when a musician uploaded their work to a streaming platform, the files tended to get compressed and lose some quality due to the encoding process. Spotify says that with Lossless Listening, users will now be able to hear every detail within the audio file.

From the delicate plucking of an electric guitar to the subtle sample of someone speaking, this new feature will allow listeners to get a heightened sense of clarity and quality when playing their favorite tracks, Spotify said. Lossless works by capturing the recording’s original sound waves and putting them together to create an accurate reproduction of its initial quality.

“We’ve taken time to build this feature in a way that prioritizes quality, ease of use, and clarity at every step, so you always know what’s happening under the hood,” Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vice president of subscriptions, said in a statement. “With Lossless, our premium users will now have an even better listening experience.”

Founded in 2006, Spotify has become the world’s most popular audio streaming service, garnering over 696 million users. Last year, the company posted a net income of more than $1.3 billion with revenue of $18.4 billion. That was its first annual net profit since the company started. The streamer, based in Sweden, is available in more than 180 markets and has a library of over 100 million tracks, almost 7 million podcast titles and 350,000 audiobooks.

Lossless Listening is currently only available for music.

This new feature comes several years after streaming competitors first introduced a similar feature. Subscribers to Apple Music and Amazon Music have had the capacity to listen to music in this format since 2021 and 2019, respectively.

On Spotify, the lossless files are larger than the standard formats, meaning the feature can not be used when connected to Bluetooth, as there’s not enough bandwidth to transmit. If attempted with Bluetooth, the file will be compressed and played at regular quality.

To use Lossless Listening on Spotify, premium users must enable it in their settings, and an icon will appear when listening.

It’s currently available for use on mobile, tablet and desktop. Spotify Premium costs $11.99 a month, while the standard version is free for use with ads.

Need a model for how to thrive in the stranglehold of the modern music economy? How about a band of Australian garage-rockers who cut albums at the pace of an Atlanta rap crew, tour like peak-era Grateful Dead and who just told the biggest company in streaming to go to hell.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are a fascinating phenomenon in rock. Over 15 years, their LPs have flitted between genres with insouciant musicianship, pulling from punky scuzz, regal soul, krautrock, electro-funk and psychedelia. These LPs come at an insane clip — sometimes up to five in a year, 27 so far. Their freewheeling live shows made them a coveted arena act, when few new rock bands can aspire to that.

Two weeks ago, they became probably the most high-profile band to take their music off Spotify in the wake of Chief Executive Daniel Ek’s investments in an AI-driven weapons firm. The band self-releases on its own labels — they needed no one’s permission.

King Gizzard returns to the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, this time backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for a live read of its new album “Phantom Island,” a standout LP that adds deft orchestration to its toolkit. The band’s frontman, Stu Mackenzie, spoke to The Times about giving Spotify the boot, how the L.A. Phil inspired the new record’s arrangements and what they’ve figured out about staying afloat while artists get squeezed from all sides today.

What was your initial reaction to Daniel Ek’s investments in an AI arms company?

A bit of shock, and then feeling that I shouldn’t be shocked. We’ve been saying f— Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that’s what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented. We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought “I don’t really want our music to be here, at least right now.” I don’t really consider myself an activist, and I don’t feel comfortable soapboxing. But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about.

Was choosing to leave a complicated decision for the band?

The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don’t really care about making money from streaming. I know it’s unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people. But sometimes you’ve just got to say, “Well, sorry, we’re not going to be here right now.” In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship.

As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that, because that’s not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes. I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that. In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I’m just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us.

Do you think Spotify noticed or cares that you left?

I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we’ve released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together. I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you’ll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive. It feels like an experiment to me, like, “Let’s just go away from Spotify, and let’s see what happens.” Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we’re just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation.

“Phantom Island” is a really distinct record in your catalog for using so much orchestration. I heard some conversations with the L.A. Phil planted the seed for it?

We played this Hollywood Bowl show a little over two years ago, and being the home stadium of the L.A. Phil, we naturally chatted with them at the show. It did plant a seed of doing a show there backed by the orchestra. We happened to be halfway through making a record at that exact time that we weren’t really sure how to finish. When we started talking about doing a show backed by an orchestra, we thought, “Let’s just make an album with an orchestra.” We rearranged and rewrote these songs with a composer, Chad Kelly. We knew the songs needed something, and we ended up rewriting the songs to work for a rock band in a symphonic medium.

Were there any records you looked to for how to make that approach work? I hear a lot of ELO in there, Isaac Hayes, maybe the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”

To be completely honest, I just don’t think there was a model for it. I think we landed on something that we only could have made because we wrote the songs not knowing there were going to be orchestral parts. When you ask me what were the touchstones, well, there weren’t any. I was probably thinking of a lot of music from the early ’60s, a lot of soul and R&B music at that time, which had often had orchestral arrangements. Etta James, for instance, was in the tone and the feel. This isn’t the perfect way to do it, but it was a really serendipitous process.

Your live shows are pretty raucous to say the least; how did you adapt to keep that feeling with orchestras behind you on this tour?

I was pretty anxious, to be honest. We only had one rehearsal the day before the first show. We had to go in and cross our fingers, like, “Okay, I think that’s going to work. I’m just going to hope that it translates.” Our rehearsal was the most intense two and a half hours, but for the show, you’re just like, “All right, this is it.” You’ve just got to commit to what’s on the page.

We’ve had some really awesome people collaborating with us — Sean O’Laughlin did the arrangements for the live shows, and Sarah Hicks is an amazing conductor. We’re just a garage rock band from Australia; we’re very lucky to get to honestly work with the best of the best.

On the other end of the venue spectrum, what was it like playing a residency in a Lithuanian prison?

It was a real prison until really recently [Lukiškės Prison 2.0 in Vilnius, Lithuania]. The history is very dark — like, very, very dark. But there are artist spaces there now, and it’s quite a culturally positive force. They’re the things that make you restore your faith in humanity. You spend so much of your life losing faith in it, and then you go to places like that, and you’re like, “Yeah, humans are okay.”

Speaking of threats to humanity, I think your band contests the idea that artists need to use AI to make enough music to be successful on streaming. You’re proof you can make a ton of music quickly, with real people.

Making music is fun as f—, especially making music with other people. That’s a deeply motivating factor, and we just have a ton of fun making music together. It feels human, it feels spiritual, it feels social. It’s deeply central to who we all are as human beings. And it doesn’t feel hard. It doesn’t feel like we’re fighting against some AI trend or anything. We just make music because it feels good.

You’re an arena act with your own label, and pretty autonomous as a band. Do you think you’ve figured out something important about how to be successful in the modern music economy?

I think we’ve been good at asking internal questions, and questioning what everybody else does and whether we need to do that or not. Sometimes we do the same thing that everybody else does. Sometimes we do something completely different because it makes sense to us. I think we’ve been quite good at being true to ourselves and being confident, or maybe reckless enough to do that.

I do think there’s some serendipity and fate in the personalities of the other guys in the band, and the people that we work with, who have have also been on a pretty unconventional journey and have faith that — in the least pretentious way possible — that other people will dig it, and not worry too much about the other other stuff.

Do you hope to see more and bigger bands striking out on their own, since the big institutions of the music business have yet again proven to not really reflect their values?

I just know what has worked for us, and I’m not sure that means that it’ll work for other people. I don’t know if there’s a model in it. If there is a model, it’s that you don’t have to follow a path if you don’t want to. The well-treaded path is going to work for some people, but you don’t have to stay on that.

I think one thing about this band is that we’ve all been at peace with failing. That if this all fell apart and we went back home and we got regular jobs, I think we would say, “Well, we’re proud of ourselves. We had a good time.” We did what we wanted to do and just suffered the consequences along the way. We’re probably being reckless enough to make potentially selfish decisions over and over again. But people, for some reason, want to come out and see us do that, and we’re super grateful.

Greg Saunier already had reasons to be wary of Spotify. The founder of the acclaimed Bay Area band Deerhoof was well acquainted with the service’s meager payouts to artists and songwriters, often estimated around $3 per thousand streams. He was unnerved by the service’s splashy pivots into AI and podcasting, where right-wing, conspiracy-peddling hosts like Joe Rogan got multimillion-dollar contracts while working musicians struggled.

But Saunier hit his breaking point in June, when Spotify’s Chief Executive Daniel Ek announced that he’d led a funding round of nearly $700 million (through his personal investment firm, Prima Materia) into the European defense firm Helsing. That company, which Ek now chairs, specializes in AI software integrated into fighter aircraft like its HX-2 AI Strike Drone. “Helsing is uniquely positioned with its AI leadership to deliver these critical capabilities in all-domain defence innovation,” Ek said in a statement about the funding round.

In response, Deerhoof pulled its catalog from Spotify. “Every time someone listens to our music on Spotify, does that mean another dollar siphoned off to make all that we’ve seen in Gaza more frequent and profitable?” Saunier said, in an interview with The Times. “It didn’t take us long to decide as a band that if Daniel Ek is going harder on AI warfare, we should get off Spotify. It’s not even that big of a sacrifice in our case.”

A small band yanking its catalog won’t make much impact on Spotify’s estimated quarterly revenues of $4.8 billion. But it seemed to inspire others: several influential acts subsequently left the service, lambasting Ek for investing his personal fortune into an AI weapons firm.

Spotify did not return request for comment about Ek’s Helsing investments.

This small exodus is unlikely to sway Ek, or dislodge Spotify from dominating the record economy. But it may further sour young music fans on Spotify, as many are outraged about wars in Gaza and elsewhere.

“There must be hundreds of bands right now at least as big as ours who are thinking of leaving,” Saunier said. “I thought we’d be fools not to leave, the risk would be in staying. How can you generate good feelings between fans when musical success is intimately associated with AI drones going around the globe murdering people?”

Swedish mogul Ek, with an estimated wealth around $9 billion, may seem an unlikely new player in the global defense industry. But his interest in Helsing goes back to 2021, when Ek invested nearly $115 million from Prima Materia and joined the company’s board. [Helsing, based in Germany, says it was founded to “help protect our democratic values and open societies” and puts “ethics at the core of defense technology development.”]

With his investment, Ek joined tech moguls Jeff Bezos and Palmer Luckey in pivoting from nerdier cultural pursuits (like online bookselling and virtual reality) into defense. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers said then that Ek’s actions “prove once again that Ek views Spotify and the wealth he has pillaged from artists merely as a means to further his own wealth.”

A range of anti-Spotify protests followed later, like a songwriters’ rally in West Hollywood in 2022 and a boycott of Spotify’s 2025 Grammy party, after Spotify cut $150 million from songwriter royalties. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their catalogs in response to Rogan spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

Yet eventually, both relented. “Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify,” Young said in a pithy note in 2022. “I hope all you millions of Spotify users enjoy my songs! They will now all be there for you except for the full sound we created.”

Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, in 2023.

(Noam Galai / Getty Images for Spotify)

Ek’s latest investment seems to have struck a nerve though, especially in the corners of music where Spotify slashed income to the point where artists have little to lose by leaving.

After Deerhoof’s announcement, the influential avant-garde band Xiu Xiu announced a similar move. “We are currently working to take all of our music off of garbage hole violent armageddon portal Spotify,” they wrote. “Please cancel your subscription.”

The Amsterdam electronic label Kalahari Oyster Cult had similar reasoning: “We don’t want our music contributing to or benefiting a platform led by someone backing tools of war, surveillance and violence,” they posted.

Most significantly, the Australian rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard — an enormously popular group that will headline the Hollywood Bowl Aug. 10. — said last week that it would pull its dozens of albums from Spotify as well. “A PSA to those unaware: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests millions in AI military drone technology,” the band wrote, announcing its departure. “We just removed our music from the platform. Can we put pressure on these Dr. Evil tech bros to do better?”

“We’ve been saying ‘f— Spotify’ for years. In our circle of musicians, that’s what people say all the time for well-documented reasons,” the band’s singer Stu Mackenzie said in an interview. “I don’t consider myself an activist, but this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves. We saw other bands we admire leaving, and we realized we don’t want our music to be there right now.”

Ek’s moves with Prima Materia come as no surprise to Glenn McDonald, a former data analyst at Spotify who became well known for identifying trends in listener habits. McDonald was laid off in 2023, and has mixed feelings about the company’s priorities today. It’s both the arbiter of the record industry and a mercurial tech giant that only became profitable last year while spinning off enormous wealth for Ek.

“It’s well documented that Spotify was only a music business because that was an open niche,” McDonald said. “I’m never surprised by billionaires doing billionaire things. Google or Apple or Amazon investing in a company that did military technology wouldn’t surprise me. Spotify subscribers should feel dismayed that this is happening, but not responsibility, because all the major streamers are about the same in moral corporate terms.”

McDonald said the company’s push toward Discovery Mode — where artists accept a lower royalty rate in exchange for better placement in its algorithm — added to the sense that Spotify is antagonistic to working artists’ values. More recently, Spotify rankled progressives when it sponsored a Washington, D.C., brunch with Rogan and Ben Shapiro celebrating President Trump’s return to the White House, and raised $150,000 for Trump’s inauguration (Apple and Amazon also donated to the inauguration).

While Ek’s investments in Helsing are not directly tied to Spotify, the money does come from personal wealth built through his ownership of Spotify’s stock. Fans are right to make a moral connection between them, McDonald said.

“Ek represents Spotify publicly, and thus its commitment to music. Him putting money into an AI drone company isn’t representing that,” McDonald said. “He can do whatever he wants with his money, but he is the face of a company as controversial and culturally important as Spotify. So yeah, people want to hold him to a less neutral standard.”

For artists looking to leave the service, the actual process of getting off Spotify varies. For King Gizzard, which releases its catalog on its own record labels, it was easy to remove everything quickly. Deerhoof and Xiu Xiu needed time to clear the move with several labels and former band members who receive royalties.

Being a smaller, autonomous band enabled Saunier to act according to his values, even at the cost of some meaningful slice of income. He has considered that, by torching his band’s relationship with Spotify, Deerhoof’s music could slip from away from some fans.

“Everyone I know hates Spotify, but we’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no other option,” he said. “But underground music is filled with so many beautiful examples of a mom-and-pop business mentality. I don’t need to dominate the world, I don’t need to be Taylor Swift to be counted as a success. I don’t need a global reach, I just need to provide myself a good life.”

Yet the only artists that might genuinely sway Ek’s investments would be ones with a global reach on the caliber of Swift. She has pulled her catalog from Spotify before, in 2014 just after releasing her smash album “1989.”

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for,” she said, before eventually returning to Spotify in 2017.

It’s hard to imagine her, or other comparable pop acts, taking a similar stand today, especially as the major labels’ fortunes are so bound up in Spotify revenues. Spotify reported a $10 billion payout to rights holders in 2024, roughly a quarter of the entire global recorded music business. Its stock has surged 120% over the last year, but in the second quarter of 2025, the firm missed earnings targets and dropped 11% this week, for the stock’s worst day in two years. “While I’m unhappy with where we are today, I remain confident in the ambitions we laid out for this business,” Ek said in an earnings call.

This recent, small exodus most likely didn’t contribute to that. But it might add to a creeping sense among young listeners that Spotify is not a morally-aligned place for fans to enjoy beloved songs.

“I actually think Spotify will eventually go the way of MySpace. It’s just a get-rich-quick scheme that will pass, become uncool, one that had its day and is probably in decline,” Saunier said. “They wrote an email to me seemingly to do face saving, which makes me think they’re more desperate than we think.”

Acts like Kneecap, Bob Vylan and others have been outspoken around the war on Gaza, at real risk to their careers — proof that young fans care deeply about these issues. While Ek would argue that Helsing helps Ukraine and Europe defend itself, others may not trust his judgment.

“Maybe it’s silly to expect cultural or moral leadership from Daniel Ek, but I don’t want it to be silly,” McDonald said. He thinks fans and artists can morally stay on Spotify, but hopes they build toward a more ethical record industry.

“It’s hard to see what ‘stay and fight’ consists of, but if everyone leaves, nothing gets better,” he said. “If we’re going to get a better music business, it’s going to come from somebody starting over from scratch without major labels, and somehow building to a point where we have enough leverage to change the power dynamic.”

King Gizzard’s Mackenzie looks forward to finding out how that might work. “I don’t expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to us, though it would be cool if he did,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve made a lot of experimental moves in music and releasing records. People who listen to our music have been conditioned to have trust and faith to go on the ride together. I feel grateful to have that trust, and this feels like an experiment to me. Let’s just go away from Spotify and see what happens.”

EXCLUSIVE: BBC bosses are risking a fallout with legendary rocker Neil Young, 79, just days before his Glastonbury gig over potential coverage of his performance on Saturday

BBC bosses risk falling foul of rock legend Neil Young just days before his Glastonbury gig. The Heart of Gold singer, 79, is one of the biggest names on the bill but it is still unclear how much of his Saturday performance will be on TV. Young is still wrangling with the BBC about coverage. Insiders suspect he will agree to letting just a handful of songs go out on TV or BBC iPlayer. Whether they will be live or part of an edited highlights package is still unclear. A BBC schedule of live sets released to the public omits Neil Young, while mentioning headliners such as Charli xcx and Doechii who play other stages on Saturday.

Bosses will have to tread carefully after the star pulled out of the festival earlier this year citing concerns about the BBC’s “corporate control”. He said in January: “We were told that BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in.

“It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “We aim to bring audiences as many performances as possible from the Pyramid Stage, and our schedules and plans continue to be finalised, right up to and during the festival.”

Young has made principled stands recently. He blocked his music from Spotify for two years, saying a podcaster on the platform had spread vaccine misinformation.

This year, he has also refused to let Ticketmaster use dynamic pricing for his forthcoming tour. When Young played Glastonbury in 2009 only five songs were televised.

Speaking at the time Mark Cooper, then executive producer of the BBC’s Glastonbury coverage, said: “Neil Young’s career has been conducted on his own terms.

“They believe in the live event and retaining its mystery and that of their artist. They have decided to make one song available online over the weekend to give a flavour of his set. That’s Rockin’ in the Free World and that’s their decision.

“You probably won’t find too many Neil Young performances available freely on TV or online.”

Elsewhere in the Glastonbury controversy, Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for Kneecap to be pulled from the line-up. The band was due to perform in the 2025 festival, but the PM doesn’t think it would be appropriate due to recent events.

He made the statement after Kneecap member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh appeared in court as he was charged with a terror offence. The incident was relating to the musician allegedly displaying a flag and making remarks in support of the proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a concert in November last year.

Liam Ó hAnnaidh goes by the stage name Mo Chara and was bailed until later in the summer, which means he is able to play at Glastonbury. The festival will kick off on June 25 up until June 30.

When asked by The Sun if he thinks Kneecap should perform at the annual festival, Starmer said: “No, I don’t. I think we need to come down really clearly on this.

“I won’t say too much, because there’s a court case on, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.” The band are scheduled to perform on the West Holts Stage on Saturday.

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May 2 (UPI) — Spotify said Friday Apple has approved its app update after a federal judge ordered Apple to stop imposing commissions it takes from purchases done through iPhone apps.

“In a victory for consumers, artists, creators, and authors, Apple has approved Spotify’s U.S. app update. After nearly a decade, this will finally allow us to freely show clear pricing information and links to purchase, fostering transparency and choice for U.S. consumers,” Spotify said in a statement.

The order from U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said found apple was “in willful violation” of a 2021 injunction to “restrain and prohibit Apple’s anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing.”

“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers said.

Apple said it will comply with the court order but strongly disagrees with the decision and will appeal.

Spotify called it a landmark ruling.

“We can now give consumers lower prices, more control, and easier access to the Spotify experience,” Spotify’s statement said. “There is more work to do, but today represents a significant milestone for developers and entrepreneurs everywhere who want to build and compete on a more level playing field. It’s the opening act of a new era, and we could not be more ready for the show.”

The ruling will allow Spotify’s app update to show consumers pricing details in the app and will allow payment options beyond Apple’s payment system for in-app purchases.

Spotify said the ruling made it clear “that Apple deliberately abused its market power to intentionally harm others and benefit only itself.”

Judge Rogers wrote in her ruling that Apple Vice President of Finance Alex Roman “outright lied under oath” about Apple’s anticompetitive behavior.

The judge referred the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California “to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.”