Listen to this article
Spotify Wrapped has launched today, which means that millions of Spotify subscribers are posting screenshots of their Top Artists and Top Songs onto their Instagram stories far and wide. Cognitive dissonance is also at an all-time high today. Cutesy and clickable streaming stats are distracting users from the truth: Spotify is the worst.
The streaming service’s CEO Daniel Elk made a $600 million investment in an A.I. military defense company Helsing, and the platform has been feeding ICE advertisements to non-Premium subscribers. Those are just the first two offenses that come to my mind; don’t get me started on the per-stream royalties, which are unfair and exploitative.
In response, Working Families Party, 50501 Movement, and Indivisible have launched “Spotify Unwrapped,” a digital toolkit to “expose Spotify’s refusal to drop ICE ads.” According to a press release, the toolkit is meant to “call out the company for refusing to drop I.C.E. recruitment ads from their platform. If Spotify won’t protect immigrant communities, then we’ll use the biggest cultural moment of their year to hold them accountable.” The organizations are calling for participants to post the Spotify Unwrapped downloadables to social media, tag Spotify, and cancel their Spotify Premium subscription.
Nelini Stamp, Director of Strategy for the Working Families Party, says about the initiative: “Spotify Wrapped is supposed to celebrate community, culture, and creativity. Instead, Spotify is platforming ICE recruitment ads—and refusing to stop even when immigrant communities and listeners object. So this year, we’re using Wrapped to hold them accountable. Art should liberate, not legitimize harm.”
50501’s National Coordinator Glo Sahay echoed Stamp’s comment, adding: “Spotify’s wrapped is just another AI-generated gimmick to keep people listening. That’s why this year we’re UN-wrapping by encouraging listeners and artists to highlight the corporate greed in their sponsorship of ICE and poor treatment of artists.”
Indivisible didn’t mince words, either. “Every year Spotify Wrapped is supposed to celebrate artists and listeners. This year, Spotify decided to wrap itself in complicity instead,” co-founder and co-executive director Ezra Levin shared. “They’re exploiting artists’ work while quietly recruiting for ICE, a secret police force tearing families apart. Spotify isn’t just playing along with the Trump regime’s authoritarian turn—they’re amplifying it. Spotify only works because of us. Now it’s on all of us to force accountability.”
Get involved by clicking this link.
