Belly make “DELETE SPOTIFY” their Spotify header

90s alt-rock band Belly have made their Spotify icon and header “DELETE SPOTIFY” and are trying to take their music off the streaming service in the latest saga of the protest against Joe Rogan’s vaccine misinformation. The band has been very vocal on their social medias over the last few days about their dislike of Spotify.

In a statement to Variety, the band said: “From the start, Spotify’s business model has been to devalue creative work and underpay artists, while lobbying (along with other tech giants) to keep the regulations governing royalty payments hard in their favour and against artists.

Turning around and using a big chunk of the money that ought to be distributed to artists to fund, and give a platform to disinformation — disinformation that may well prolong the pandemic and further hurt artists by limiting live-performance options — is finally too much. Yes, we believe in free speech, but we do not believe we have an obligation to help fund deliberate disinformation and doubt sowed to undermine the very notion of a collective, public good (and get underpaid in the process).”

Strictly from a business standpoint: Heinous enough that @Spotify doesn't pay its artists but to use that revenue to fund Covid disinfo thereby prolonging the pandemic which has kept all of us from touring income makes it even more obvious #cancelspotify + #maskup #GetVaccinated https://t.co/T6nlr50kYM

— Belly (@bellytheband) January 28, 2022

Belly has been trying to get their music off the site to follow Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren, but due to their record label contracts it’s proving to be harder for the band than it was for the other artists.

“When a record label loans an artist the money to record material they expect a return on that investment and that expectation is reflected in contractual obligations and usage/control rights. What this means is that we cannot unilaterally decide to pull out work from Spotify, at least for our 1990s releases — we have to request that the label we were under contract with do it.

“Like other major labels, the one that controls our 90s masters has deals with Spotify.” Belly told Variety.

Spotify’s market capitalisation fell roughtly $2.1 billion over a three-day span this week after Young pulled his songs from the platform.

Shares of Spotify fell 6% from January 26-28.

“DELETE SPOTIFY” is still on Belly’s Spotify and social media profiles, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be leaving any time soon.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.