Despite pulling their extensive catalog from Spotify this past July, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard recently found themselves once again entangled with the divisive digital service provider. For the prolific Australian psych rock band, the decision to remove their dozens of releases from the streaming service came about due to a moral conflict.
King Gizzard took issue with the investments made by the company’s co-founder Daniel Ek. When the latter led a round of $693.6 million funding for a company (Helsing) developing AI technology for military applications over the spring, Gizzard felt they could no longer in good conscience remain on the service. In turn, they publicly exited Spotify in protest, sacrificing the 1.1 million monthly listeners they had on the streamer at the time in a bid to remain true to their core values.
Ek, who oversaw the funding mentioned above via his Prima Materia venture capital firm, drew widespread criticism for the controversial investment from numerous artists, many of whom like King Gizzard, subsequently severed ties with Spotify.
While it appeared King Gizzard had effectively washed their hands of the service after this past summer’s departure, November saw the emergence of an apparent AI King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard copycat/tribute band surface not only on Spotify, but other streaming services as well.
Dubbed ‘King Lizard Wizard‘, a self-titled EP of generic facsimiles of the Australian psych rock band’s songs were uploaded, complete with writing credits attributed to King Gizzard‘s own Stu Mackenzie. The songs sported similar lyrics, song elements, and even the same song titles, That EP had remained on the streaming service up until this week, when the existence of the proverbial AI slop made the rounds on social media and various publications, including this piece published here at theprp.com.
In light of increased scrutiny, that EP has now been removed from Spotify, having been determined to be in violation of the streaming service’s policies. A statement issued by a Spotify representative to The Music read:
“Spotify strictly prohibits any form of artist impersonation. The content in question was removed for violating our policies, and no royalties were paid out for any streams generated.”
While the offending EP may no longer being a problem for the band on Spotify, it still lurks out there, remaining available via Spotify rival Tidal as of press time. Meanwhile, Mackenzie himself weighed in on the situation, stating he was, “trying to see the irony in this situation,” before adding, “But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”
