Music consumption has changed drastically over the last few years. Back in the 90’s and early 2000s, everyone listened to music on the compact disc. After more computers began popping up in more households, internet buying services like iTunes and Amazon started ruling the music screen. Now iTunes and services like that are a thing of the past and streaming services like Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify are controlling the music screen.

Spotify is the most popular out these sites, with almost 40 million active users. But with popularity comes great criticism. Many artist such as Taylor Swift, Radiohead, and Jay-z (the last of which started a rival company in Tidal) have actively spoke out against the streaming giant for not paying the right amount of royalties.

“I feel like as musicians we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what’s happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen,” Thom Yorke from Radiohead told Mexican news outlet Sopitas.

But on October 20th, the alternative record label Victory Records pulled all of their bands and their records off Spotify, because the site was not paying them enough royalties. So such bands such as Streetlight Manifesto, Emmure and early records from Between the Buried and Me were not available on Spotify. Even though now those bands are now on the site, they were still  not on the site for around 2 weeks.

“Ironically, Victory Records hasn’t paid us a cent in royalties in over 2 years,” said Tomas Kalnoky, lead singer and guitarist for the Ska-punk band Streetlight Manifesto, on the band’s official Twitter page.

By the time of writing this tweet, Kalnoky and his band were getting sued by Victory Records for 1 million dollars for not reaching contractual agreements. Victory claimed that Streetlight didn’t meet their agreement to record up to four albums in a ten year span. The band Released five records in that span, but Victory claims that 2 of those records don’t count because 2006’s Keasbey Nights had a lot of songs from Kalnoky’s other Ska band on Victory, Catch 22, and 2009’s 99 Songs of Revolution was a collection of cover songs.

Kalnoky had been at war with Victory for as long as he and his bands have been signed to the label. In 2013, when the band was promoting their album “Hands that Thieve”, they strongly encouraged their fans to not buy their merch from Victory and to also priate their new music. Then after “Hands that Thieve” was released and his deal with Victory was done, Kalnoky made their own record label, Pentimento music, and took Streetlight Manifesto’s, Catch 22’s, and his solo stuff with him.

Kalnoky still talks ill of his old record label, when is a post on Streetlight’s official website, Kalnoky was quoted by saying “Victory Records is an artist-hostile, morally corrupt and generally dishonest company, with whom we have had the displeasure of being associated due to a contract that was signed years ago.”

So when Victory pulled their discography from spotify a lot of dirty laundry from Kalnoky was aired out for the world to see. A lot fans of both the band and music fans in general were all saying the same thing, “A label who has been happily screws bands over, is mad because Spotify won’t pay them enough.”

Victory has been about the integrity of music but they don’t care one bit about their artist. This pull from Spotify is going to hurt them more than it does help them, Spotify helps get out the word on bands that not many people would have discovered if it wasn’t for the site. Now that Victory has eliminated that, their music will sell less and less because people have no idea about there product. Victory is just being selfish and needs to actually support their artist, not just limit their market.