Metallica Threatens To Pull Music From Spotify Unless Company Increases Executive Salaries

SAN FRANCISCO—Offering harsh criticism for a streaming platform that has often faced charges of unfair compensation, Metallica announced Monday that it would remove its music from Spotify unless the company immediately increased the salaries of all high-level executives. “Frankly, we can no longer stay silent and support the insultingly low amounts of money Spotify pays out to its top brass, some of whom still earn salaries as low as seven figures,” said drummer Lars Ulrich, pulling up a recent earnings statement for his band and questioning why more of Metallica’s hard-earned money wasn’t lining the pockets of Spotify’s CFO Paul Vogel, for instance, who according to Ulrich was making pennies on the dollar compared to what he was owed. “We’re taking a stand here and now: Until Spotify agrees to stop profiting off the backs of its direly undercompensated C-suite, it will not have access to the Metallica catalog, plain and simple. We cannot in good conscience sit back and do nothing when some of the people at the top of this company’s org chart have no guarantee they’ll ever be able to retire as billionaires. Without them, Spotify would just be a bunch of useless songs with no one to undervalue them.” Metallica went on to announce the band would be donating all royalties for the foreseeable future to fund the acquisition of private jets for Spotify’s leadership.