British trip-hop group Massive Attack have announced they are joining a new music industry initiative to block their music in Israel and has also asked for their songs to be removed from Spotify, AFP reports.
The Bristol natives said they had joined “No Music for Genocide”, a collective of musicians modelled on the “Film Workers for Palestine” group, which has also called for a cultural boycott of Israel over the war in Gaza.
“We’d appeal to all musicians to transfer their sadness, anger and artistic contributions into a coherent, reasonable and vital action to end the unspeakable hell being visited upon the Palestinians hour after hour,” the group wrote on Instagram on Thursday.
A website for “No Music for Genocide” says it brings together more than 400 artists and labels that “have geo-blocked and removed their music” from Israel in protest at the country’s Gaza campaign. It offers advice to artists about how to geo-block their songs so they are unavailable on streaming platforms in Israel.
Massive Attack also said they had asked their label to remove all their songs from Spotify over investments in a European defence start-up by the CEO and co-founder of the Swedish streaming platform, Daniel Ek.