The Brief

Over the summer, a slew of bands began to make similar announcements on social media: They'd be pulling their music off Spotify, the largest streaming service in the world.

It started in June with indie rock quartet Deerhoof. Within weeks, groups like Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Hotline TNT followed suit. The wave of departures continued into September; most recently, The Mynabirds, WU LYF, Kadhja Bonet and Young Widows have all decided to leave Spotify. So why are musicians — many of them independent — removing their songs from the most popular streamer globally, which has nearly 700 million users?

All artists cite Spotify Chief Executive Daniel Ek's ties to Helsing, an artificial intelligence defense company with a mission to "attain technological leadership so that democratic societies are free to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards." In 2021, Ek's venture capital firm Prima Materia invested more than $100 million into the German startup. In June, Prima Materia raised more than $700 million for Helsing, where Ek is now also chairman. He told The Financial Times that Prima Materia is "doubling down" on its investments in light of the role that AI plays in Russia's war on Ukraine. The Financial Times reported that Helsing is now producing its own drones, aircraft and submarines.

It's not the first time artists have decided to cut ties with Spotify. In 2013, Thom Yorke removed his solo albums from the streaming service to protest low royalty payouts (his music has since reappeared on the platform). The following year, Taylor Swift wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal arguing that "music should not be free" and pulled her songs from Spotify; three years later, she returned her discography to all streaming services. In 2022, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell left Spotify in objection to the company's exclusive relationship with Joe Rogan, citing concerns that Rogan was spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on his massively successful podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Young and Mitchell ended their boycott in 2024 after Rogan's podcast became available on multiple streaming platforms.

But this most recent exodus, which began shortly after the June fundraising news, marks a new wave of artist-led protests against Spotify.

"We don't want our music killing people. We don't want our success being tied to AI battle tech," Deerhoof wrote in a statement shared with NPR. "Deerhoof is a small mom and pop operation, and know when enough is enough. We aren't capitalists, and don't wish to take over the world. Especially if the price of 'discoverability' is letting oligarchs fill the globe with computerized weaponry, we're going to pass on the supposed benefits."

Spotify and Helsing declined to comment on artists leaving the platform in protest of Ek's investments. But several artists NPR spoke with say their concerns with Spotify span far beyond how the CEO spends his earnings.

"The sound quality is horrible. The disposable-ness of music has become almost culturally endemic, and then obviously the financial aspect of it is a joke," says Jamie Stewart of the experimental rock group Xiu Xiu. "It has not done anything good for bands. It has done good things for itself."

Xiu Xiu formed in California in 2002. Stewart says the rise of file-sharing and iTunes caused a near-immediate decline in royalties, but in the last decade and a half, the popularization of streaming platforms including Spotify has significantly worsened financial compensation.

In a statement shared with NPR, a Spotify spokesperson explained how the company's payout model is structured.

"All of the major streaming services use the same pro rata model for payouts to rightsholders, and we pay the most," the statement reads. "In this model, payouts are based on streamshare, not a per-stream rate. That means if an artist's catalog accounts for 1% of total streams, it would earn 1% of total royalties. It's not a coincidence that the least popular streaming services, where people listen the least, have the highest per-stream rates, as lack of user engagement is exactly what drives a higher per-stream rate."

Spotify's annual economic Loud & Clear report found that the company paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, the most out of any streaming service. The number of people uploading music to Spotify has also grown, which means "the fraction who find success appears smaller over time."

Stewart says Spotify is a large source of digital revenue for Xiu Xiu, and they're expecting to feel an impact from exiting the platform. "We don't make very much money at all to begin with, but it's enough that it's a noticeable amount that we will not be making anymore," they explain. "It's not going to make any difference to Spotify. But it is a very, very small way of standing up to what tech companies have become."

Searching for alternatives 

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, recorded music revenue has been growing consistently for nearly a decade, and streaming is the largest driver of that growth. But a survey conducted in 2024 by MusiCares — the nonprofit founded by the Recording Academy to support the financial, mental and physical well-being of musicians — found that 69% of respondents cannot cover expenses from working in music alone. The artists NPR spoke with expressed frustration that despite record-breaking profits for both the recording industry and streaming services, that money does not seem to always trickle down to the artists.

"It's really hard to have superhigh principles at this point with how problematic so many of these companies are," says Seth Hubbard, director of Xiu Xiu's label, Polyvinyl Records. "If you start looking under the hood a bit, a lot of it is problematic. And then where do you draw the line?"

For singer Kadhja Bonet, the answer is clear. After negotiating an early exit from her former label, Bonet announced in August that all future releases, including her upcoming EP Battlewear, out Sept. 18, will not be available on Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Amazon or YouTube.

"We give these tech giants power by furnishing them with all of our best ideas and driving business their way," Bonet wrote in a statement shared with NPR. "I put a lot of thought and love into the music I make, so it's only right to put the same thought into the way it's delivered."

She recommends alternative platforms and digital stores like Qobuz and Bandcamp.

The indie rock band Hotline TNT, which announced its departure from Spotify in August, is also focusing on substitute revenue streams. On Sept. 5, singer and guitarist Will Anderson hosted a 24-hour livestream on Twitch, YouTube and Instagram to promote sales of the band's latest album, Raspberry Moon. Anderson, who started Hotline TNT as a solo project several years ago, sold over 300 copies of the album on Bandcamp alone, which he says accounts for more profit in 24 hours than the band usually makes in months of Spotify streams. He says fans have been supportive of the group's decision to part ways with Spotify, leading record sales to triple on tour.

"I would like to see consumer spending habits drift back into ownership over this rental system we have right now," Anderson says. "When someone buys one of our records at a show, no one's going to take the music off their shelf overnight like we just did with Spotify."

A new reality

For some artists, a push toward that ownership model works. In January, folk-pop chameleon Caroline Rose announced that her new album, year of the slug, would not be available on any streaming platforms. Instead, with Rose inspired by a similar release model used by artist Cindy Lee, the album would be available for purchase on Bandcamp or directly from Rose on a solo tour of all-independent venues.

"You have to try ever so slightly harder, or you have to come to a show and get an album," she says. "We only had a limited number of vinyl that we were selling, so once it sold, it sold. I miss that feeling that something was special, that there was a limited amount of it."

Rose says the rollout was the culmination of years of frustration with the industry's emphasis on profits and numbers, all of which was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when label and tech executives continued to make money while artists canceled tours and struggled to get by.

"It just felt like we were being overlooked and forgotten and everybody else was just kind of biding their time until they could go back to work and everything would be normal again," she says. "It felt catastrophic, and that feeling has only become bigger."

When her label contract ended, Rose says, she breathed a sigh of relief and decided to try something different. In February, year of the slug came out as a completely independent project; it's also her most profitable record to date because it's the only one she fully owns. More importantly, she says, the feedback from fans has been overwhelmingly supportive.

Rose admits that there are drawbacks — this kind of release doesn't lend itself to discovery by new rather than existing listeners, and it would become much more difficult to financially sustain a tour with a full band rather than by herself. But for now, it was the break she needed.

"It's been extremely fulfilling, and personally, I needed this just to feel a little bit more connection to my fans and to the audience. I meet people. We have drinks together. It feels very communal," says Rose. "I want a career of quality rather than any and everything quantifiable. I don't want to be hounded by stats and money and how many ticket sales I'm selling. It's not a quality life to me."

Copyright 2025 NPR

The Trump administration is renewing its push to change the way it funds homeless shelters and housing in California and other states, and several agencies say it could disrupt their services.

It tried last year to move federal homelessness funds away from permanent housing and into temporary housing that requires sobriety. That move, which goes against the existing “housing first” policy favoring a no-strings-attached approach to housing, was blocked by a federal judge.

Now, the Trump administration is trying again. Once again, it’s facing pushback.

This week, a group that includes the National Alliance to End Homelessness and Santa Clara County filed a challenge in Rhode Island’s federal court to the Trump administration’s latest funding guidelines.

The Trump administration’s callous decision to take a second bite at dismantling one of our nation’s most important homelessness prevention programs after a federal court already blocked the administration’s first attempt shows a complete disregard for the people who depend on this funding to keep a roof over their heads,” Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said in a news release.

More than $4 billion in federal funding is at stake. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates the proposed changes could cost California nearly $238 million for permanent housing, and threaten to put nearly 15,000 Californians back on the street.

“The ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results. This ideology promised to end homelessness. Instead, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent while homelessness increased to record levels,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a news release earlier this month.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

More than a month after the abrupt cancellation of this year’s Long Beach Pride Festival, the nonprofit behind the enduring celebration remains in a financial bind. It has so far been unable to repay its vendors, ticketholders and sponsors as it awaits a decision on whether its insurer will cover its losses.

That decision, according to Long Beach Pride President Tonya Martin, will factor heavily into whether they take more drastic action to cover the debt, such as selling or leasing out their headquarters.

“We do want to keep the building,” Martin said. “But if we have to sell it, we have to sell it, because right now all we can think about is how we’re going to pay back all the vendors and the rest of the ticketholders.”

According to the organization’s treasurer, Wayne Manous, Long Beach Pride filed a claim with its carrier, the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California, a few days after the festival was canceled on May 15. They expect a determination in the next week, Martin said.

“Once we receive the determination and award, we can begin refunding payments to our festival vendors which encompasses Information Booths, Seller Booths, Food Booths, Food Trucks, and others awaiting a refund,” Manous wrote in a June 10 email to vendors seeking refunds.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, the organization declined to offer the total amount it owes or elaborate more on its insurance claim, saying it will wait until “those processes are fully resolved.”

The festival was canceled last month after the city of Long Beach issued a cease-and-desist letter less than an hour before its opening event, saying Pride lacked the necessary permits to start.

Many vendors and ticketholders — some who flew in or drove from other parts of the country — say they were in transit or had already arrived at the festival grounds when they were given notice of the cancellation, either from the city or from friends on social media.

Erica Loring, who owns Shecanter, an online retailer of feminist and queer products, said she was driving up from San Diego the morning of the event when a friend texted her the news.

“I was very confused,” Loring said. “I had to try and figure out what the heck that meant, what it means for vendors, if we’ve gotten any emails to notify us. ‘Do we still go up there?’”

Kaitlyn Nguyen with Heritage 1857, a Vietnamese-style coffee brand, said she received notice not from Pride but from the city’s Health Department, telling her she no longer had permission to sell her goods there.

By that point, she said, her festival crew had already driven into town from Texas and set up a tent and driven an hour outside of town. When she tried to call Long Beach Pride’s general line to get more information, it was disconnected.

Nguyen said she spent around $2,500 on gas, fees, product, permitting and everything else she needed to participate. Now she’s uncertain how much, if any, she will recover. “With the communication that it is at right now, it’s just hard to tell, but I do hope that we get that amount back,” she said.

In the days following the festival’s cancellation, the city and Pride traded blame, offering dueling timelines over what caused it. Long Beach Pride argued it submitted documents and worked with the city in good faith through the final hours and was taken off guard by the city’s order to clear out.

Martin said she was stunned when officers delivered the cease-and-desist to the festival grounds. “You have two days to get everything off the site, or you’ll be arrested,” she recalled being told. “I was in shock, just floored. I was just weak at the knees.”

Tonya Martin, with an original Pride founder, Bob Crow, talks about Long Beach Pride in Long Beach, Monday, June 26, 2023.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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The city fired back in a 23-page memo, saying the nonprofit repeatedly failed to provide permitting materials and structural plans for stages, electrical systems and security. As the situation worsened, city officials offered to move guests into the Terrace Theater and open Bixby Park for a smaller event on Sunday, without alcohol sales or fenced festival grounds.

Pride declined both options, later saying the theater was too costly — more than $100,000, they said — while Bixby Park did not allow enough time to satisfy performers’ contractual requirements.

City spokesperson Laath Martin said Tuesday that Long Beach’s business licensing team has been offering refunds to vendors for city fees. But in the month since the event, vendors say they’ve heard little to no word from Pride itself on when or if they will be repaid for other expenses and fees.

Even before this year’s shock cancellation, the festival, established in 1983, had been struggling.

According to tax filings, Pride lost more than $1.8 million between 2022 and 2024 — $819,066 in 2022, $716,729 in 2023 and $306,000 in 2024. The organization has not turned a profit since 2019.

When Martin took over as president in 2023, she said she unknowingly inherited an organization already carrying $2.6 million in outstanding debt. A year after Martin took the helm, the nonprofit relinquished control of its long-running Pride parade. The city took over planning and funding for the signature event while Pride attempted to keep running the corresponding festival.

The crowds gather along Ocean Boulevard for the 41st Annual Long Beach Pride Parade in Long Beach, Sunday, May 19, 2024.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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The festival’s budget this year was $500,000, and Pride had raised less than $100,000 of it by the time the event was canceled, with only 331 tickets sold as of late April, according to Q Voice News. Pride declined to confirm the number of tickets sold or provide any detailed financial information to the Long Beach Post.

Corporate sponsorships, once a reliable source of major revenue, had largely evaporated, Martin said, naming Walmart and Coca-Cola as examples of large companies that have quietly pulled back as the Trump administration has coerced firms to forgo LGBTQ+ and diversity initiatives.

“They don’t want to upset the president,” Martin said. “Nobody will come out and say it, which I wish they would.”

Normally, Martin said, Pride hires an outside operator to put on the festival, which can run upwards of $400,000. But under financial pressure, she and the board voted to avoid the expense and handle the festival setup themselves. As Martin has repeatedly emphasized since the cancellation, they are all part-time volunteers.

This year’s event was shaping up to be small, according to Loring; only 13 retail or merchandise vendors were listed to participate. “Smaller than a tiny farmer’s market,” Loring said. Another 10 or so food vendors were signed up, Nguyen said, about half of what she’d expect at a festival this size.

“I was like, OK, was the application process a deterrent, or have bridges already been burned, and these businesses have learned not to come to Long Beach due to prior experience?” Nguyen said.

In a letter over the weekend, Pride said it wants to bring the festival back in 2027 under new leadership, with lessons learned and, it hopes, a more stable financial footing.

The board also said that Martin would step down from the presidency in August, a transition the organization said had been planned before the cancellation. Martin confirmed her exit on Monday, saying she will step away from the role and intends to help whoever succeeds her get up to speed. She said she also plans to hold a debrief with Mayor Rex Richardson to discuss what went wrong.

The organization is also working with the city to hold a free Teen Pride event in September.

“I don’t think Pride will ever go away, no matter what they do, even if we change the whole scope of the event itself,” Martin said. “It will never go away. It’ll always be there.”

But Loring, who made her vendor debut in Long Beach, said she would not return if the event is run by the same people.

She was shocked when Pride asked in a June 10 email if vendors and ticketholders would consider donating back a portion of their refunds to the organization. “The audacity for that was on another level,” Loring said.

“It seems as though the entire Pride organization needs an overhaul,” she said. “It needs a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of experience in order for the community to move forward faithfully.”

Two icons of Los Angeles are coming together in Alhambra for a food pop-up this weekend — each has carved a unique place in Asian America.

On one end you have Kogi, bringing its Korean-Mexican fusion kimchi taco and blackjack quesadilla — and its food truck — to the collab. On the other is Sam Woo, old-school purveyor of Cantonese taste lending its char siu and roast duck from its OG location on Valley between 5th and 6th.

Together, they represent two generations of immigrant entrepreneurship that reshaped how L.A. eats.

“The best way to do it would be to come together like Voltron, but be ourselves separately,” said Roy Choi, chef and founder of Kogi BBQ. “So don't do anything to your roast duck. Don't do anything to your char siu. Don't do anything to our blackjack quesadilla. Don't do anything to our taco.”

The mash-up features two items – roast duck kimchi taco, and char siu blackjack quesadilla. The best-of-both-worlds concept extends to where the food will be served.

“ My whole vision was for Kogi truck to be parked in front,” said Karen Cheung, daughter of Sam Woo’s original owner.

Kogi x Sam Woo

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Courtesy Kogi and Sam Woo

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From Chinatown to everywhere

Restaurants come and go, but Sam Woo has remained the byword for Cantonese barbeque in Los Angeles and beyond for more than four decades.

On Christmas Day 1979, new immigrant Peter Cheung opened a stand serving take-out roast duck, char siu and the likes in Chinatown, bringing the family craft from Hong Kong to L.A.

“At the time, it was just my dad, my brother, and me,” Cheung, 67, said in Cantonese. “We hired a cashier and a meat cutter, that was about it.”

Cheung also brought over the Chinese name from the family business back home. It means “three harmonies” – among earth, heaven, and man. The English name Sam Woo was chosen because it sounded like the Cantonese words.

Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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In the late 1970s, his clientele was mainly Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in the then-bustling enclave, with a small handful of customers coming in from Monterey Park.

Back then, he said, “All the restaurants were concentrated in Chinatown.”

As the Chinese-speaking diaspora expanded to the San Gabriel Valley, so too did Sam Woo. Cheung opened a Monterey Park location in 1981 (now closed) and the Alhambra outpost on Valley Boulevard in 1983.

Today, Cheung and his family own and operate four locations across the L.A. region — the oldest in Alhambra.

That little storefront served a loyal legion of eaters, including my family, who moved to Alhambra in the early 1990s — and a kid named Roy Choi.

Roy Choi, left, hands out food from his Kogi BBQ truck in Maywood in January 2024.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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When Roy met Sam

Choi was hanging out in Alhambra and nearby 626 cities during high school and into college, at all-night Asian cafes and their parking lots where a subculture centered around modified Japanese cars took root.

“It was the cafes and the barbecue spots back in Alhambra that were early on in having a kind of a meeting ground for young Asian youth,” Choi said. “It might have been the birth of the AZN movement, you know what I'm saying?”

One place he always ate at was Sam Woo.

Strip mall signs in San Gabriel point to a majority Asian population in this part of Los Angeles.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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“One of the top five things to eat for me is roast duck or roast pork over rice with the sauce that drips down into it,” he said. “That's where I started really eating barbecue  — and this is before I was a chef.”

Forty-three years since it opened, the hole-in-the-wall in Alhambra has not been changed — inside or out. Karen remembers hanging out at the shop with her sisters growing up, filling small containers of sauces while their parents ran the operation.

“ When you walk into Alhambra, you feel like you are going back in time,” Karen said. “That's what people remember Sam Woo as, like the Mahjong clock, or the vintage menu that you do not ever see anymore. That's people's memories.”

The mahjong clock at Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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Karen Cheung

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Courtesy Sam Woo

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The take-out menu at Sam Woo.

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Karen Cheung

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Courtesy Sam Woo

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How the collab fell into place

Choi wrote about eating at Sam Woo among other culinary adventures in L.A. earlier this year for the Financial Times.

Karen, one of Peter’s four children, read the story – and fired off a DM.

“I was like, ‘We're so honored. Out of all the restaurants you could talk about, you mentioned Sam Woo,” Karen said. “‘Let's do a collab.’”

Six months of planning later, with hundreds of pounds of char siu ready to be cooked, the crossover is happening.

Chef Roy Choi cooking inside Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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Courtesy Kogi BBQ

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Sam Woo in Alhambra.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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“The inspiration is how delicious their food is [and] the longevity of their restaurant,” Choi said, whose Kogi has redefined fusion cooking and the food truck experience for 19 years and counting.

“We wanna bring something really special to Alhambra," he said. "Just a moment that you could say, ‘I was there.’”