Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn say their views on Daniel Ek’s Helsing stake have not changed, even as Ow ∞ and the back catalog returned to the service on Sept. 18
Sylvan Esso put its music back on Spotify this month after keeping it off the service for a year.
The North Carolina duo had pulled the catalog in September 2025. The stated reason then was Daniel Ek’s investment, through his venture firm, in Helsing, an AI software company that builds military weapons systems. Ek was Spotify’s chief executive at the time.
Amelia Meath said on Instagram that the return was not a change of mind. It was about keeping people paid. Returning the catalog and the new album, she said, is required “to continue to employ everyone that we employ.”
Ow ∞ — pronounced “ow infinity” — came out Sept. 11 on the band’s own imprint, Psychic Hotline. The record is the group’s fifth studio album. The full catalog, including that set, went back onto Spotify beginning Sept. 18, according to the band’s Instagram post and a subsequent interview with NPR Music.
Meath asked listeners not to use Spotify for the music anyway. She pointed them to Bandcamp, Qobuz, Subvert and local record stores. She also cited “82% of streaming” as happening on Spotify.
That concentration is the part executives and product teams should sit with. This was not a hobbyist protest. Sylvan Esso is a mid-scale act with a studio, a label, collaborators and a touring payroll. Nick Sanborn, Meath’s bandmate and husband, told NPR member station WUNC that the pair are “not so big that we can escape the reality of the capitalist system.”
“I’m really, really proud of the decision that we made to get off of Spotify — and, it just ended up feeling like it was truly unsustainable,” Meath told reporter Brian Burns. “Namely, it turns out monopolies are bad. It kind of just touched every aspect of our career.”
Sanborn put a number on the gap without publishing one. “It’s not just the financial thing — which was a lot of money,” he said. “I always joke that we’re the last middle-class band in the world. It was a significant hit, which I was honored and proud to take.” Then the rest of the job went soft. Playlist campaigns. Algorithmic discovery. Casual listeners who type a name into one app and leave if the album is not there.
Meath said that last piece surprised her more than the lost checks. The band was releasing its own record on its own label. “I just want everyone to hear it,” she said. “And by taking ourselves off of Spotify, we accidentally set up a pretty large barrier for access.” She will hunt a record down. Plenty of people will not. They open the app they already pay for, miss the title, and play something else.
The timing was deliberate. Sanborn said his “pride at least wanted to make it a year.” The pullout’s anniversary and the album’s first week without the dominant storefront were meant to keep the return from becoming the rollout. “We certainly didn’t want coming back on to be the story of the record,” he said.
Has Spotify changed in that year, from their chair? “No, not at all. Not in any way,” Meath said. Sanborn called the company’s public tweaks “a hullabaloo about some changes, that I think were nothing.”
They were not the only act to leave. Deerhoof started a wave in June 2025. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Massive Attack were in the same conversation. Sanborn said there was no real coordination. King Gizzard, Meath noted, “never had Spotify listenership, really, in the same way. They’ve always been a Bandcamp band.” Different P&L. Different exit.
The decision to go back sat with the two of them. The team was asked for temperature checks, then told to execute. Meath said taking the music down was her idea and “really easy.” Putting it back was “the more complicated of the decisions.”
For managers modeling an off-platform year, the usable finding is blunt. DSP share here functions as a labor constraint. Sanborn’s line for other artists: the bar is “extremely high.” “The penalties are massive. They’re financial. Again, they touch everything.”