Magnus Uggla withdraws from Spotify

Swedish musician Magnus Uggla wasn't entirely impressed with the money he was making from Spotify. He asked his label, Sony, about it; they told him it was all to the good and to keep faith with the service.

They, erm, somehow forgot to mention to him that Sony were a shareholder in Spotify:

Uggla was as surprised as most people when he learned last week that the major labels, including Sony, all have a stake in Spotify. A mere 30,000 kroner ($4,000) investment bought the company 5.8% of the service now valued at around 1.8 billion kroner ($251m).

Referring to the valuation, Uggla questions how this company can do so well – and comes to the conclusion that it’s at the artist’s expense. He says that Sony Music, after “suing the shit out of The Pirate Bay” is acting just like them by not paying the artists.

“I would rather be raped by Pirate Bay than by Hasse Breitholtz and Sony Music and will remove all of my songs from Spotify pending an honest service,” he says.

But Magnus, surely you know that the major labels only do what they do for the artists?