#NoMusicForICE, which is a campaign by musicians who are boycotting Amazon over its ties with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), entered its second phase on Black Friday, with musicians demanding that the company stop streaming and selling their songs.
About a month ago, over 1,000 artists started #NoMusicForICE to target Amazon and its lucrative cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has contracts with ICE. In the initial phase of the campaign, these artists simply refused to perform at events the company sponsored until the contracts were terminated.
The artists participating in the original campaign included:
- Speedy Ortiz
- Deerhoof
- Downtown Boys
- CAKE
- Atmosphere
- Immortal Technique
The limited nature of the campaign drew criticism from some, who felt that the artists were not risking much by taking their stance. One of the organizers even acknowledged that this criticism was valid and indicated that in the future the boycott could be extended, which has just happened.
In the second phase of the campaign, artists are sending Amazon takedown notices, requesting that the company stop streaming their music and stop selling digital versions of their songs.
Sadie Dupuis, who is a member of Speedy Ortiz and one of the organizers of the campaign, says, “We’ve had this in mind from day one. The hope is that by making a bunch of noise around it now, we either get people committed to not using it, to not collaborating with them, or get Amazon to say, ‘hey, artists are pulling from our service, maybe we reconsider these contracts.'”
While the focus of the campaign is ICE, the artists have a broader list of targets. They are demanding that Amazon terminate its agreements with all entities “that commit human rights abuses.” Specifically, they want Amazon to stop working as well with Palantir, which is a data analytics company with ICE contracts.
So far, it is not known how many of the original 1,000 artists are participating in the second phase of the campaign.
lol yes i’m sure theyre so scared of losing the speedy ortiz discog.
OMG THE SPEEDY ORTIZ DISCOGRAPHY?? HOW WILL THEY EVER SELL SUBSCRIPTIONS? THATS LIKE LOSING FLOYD AND THE BEATLES COMBINED!!
Good. More artists should follow suit
What was the first phase? Artists deciding they know better than the little people? So the 2nd phase is we won’t make music for you if you have a different opinion than us, the chosen artists? Wow. Ok. Don’t make music for us. Thanks for opting out of the human race.