Detroit’s Tiny Jag has released new music, but you won’t find it on Spotify.
On Wednesday, the rapper dropped her new single “Starbubu” as a direct download on tinyjag.com, citing disillusionment with the world’s most popular streaming platform.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep at night if I don’t take a stand,” Tiny Jag tells Metro Times.
“I feel like a lot of us probably should have left way before now,” she says, adding that it was a decision she arrived at with her producer Thibault Ruellan. “We want to remain authentic, and unfortunately Spotify has gotten themselves wrapped up in some things that don’t align with our morals.”
A growing number of artists have pulled their music from Spotify in 2025, including global acts like Massive Attack, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Sylvan Esso, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Deerhoof, and Xiu Xiu. In recent years, Spotify has faced backlash for its low pay for artists, billionaire CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek’s financial ties to a military technology company, and interrupting music with recruitment ads for President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security urging listeners “to fulfill your mission” of rounding up undocumented immigrants, which Tiny Jag calls “just completely obscene.”
The artist says she could not live with her art “even indirectly being used for harm.”
She adds, “I guess when it was just about not paying us a lot, that was one thing, but when it’s about compromising the lives of others, I mean, that’s just a no-brainer.”
(Earlier this year, Detroit Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act, which would overhaul the way artists are paid for streaming.)
Others have criticized Spotify for allowing “ghost artists” and AI-generated music to proliferate on the platform, taking away opportunities from independent artists.
“I feel extremely threatened not just as an artist, but because of the way that art influences our world, I feel extremely threatened as a people,” Tiny Jag says. The antidote to artists competing with AI-generated slop, she believes, is showing “vulnerability” and “authenticity.”
“Everything is so commercialized to the point where we’re worrying about all the wrong stuff,” she says. “I feel like this is just a little bit of a nudge … but we should have kind of been doing this anyway.”
In September, Ek announced he would step down as Spotify CEO in 2026, some two decades after he co-founded the company in Sweden, and in October the company announced a crackdown on AI and spam — both apparent attempts at reputation management. But in an age of passive consumption pushed by streaming giants like Spotify, Tiny Jag says this is an opportunity for artists to reconsider how they cultivate their art and their fans.
“I know that some of the other platforms like Bandcamp and a few others are doing cool things for the artists, but I think that this is a good time to kind of challenge us to really get on our own shit a little bit and figure out what we can do for ourselves,” she says.
While some artists have pulled their entire catalogs off of Spotify and urged their fans to cancel their subscriptions, Tiny Jag says she will not release future music on the platform.
And as for her new track, “Starbubu,” Tiny Jag says it’s part of her return to rap after going in a more pop direction. The title is a mashup of those trendy Labubu toys that took the world by storm in 2025 and the 1978 album Starbooty by jazz artist Roy Ayers, as Tiny Jag raps over a horn sample from its track “Simple and Sweet” mixed with a trap beat.
“It’s a really fun one,” Tiny Jag says of “Starbubu,” adding “It’s a super, very braggadocious track … just an all-around queer girl anthem.”
Tiny Jag says she and Ruellan plan to release new music as direct downloads on tinyjag.com. “I’m thinking of maybe having like a few different tiers of payment … and let people just choose what they’re able to do or how they feel about it,” she says.
“I was so nervous about making this change,” she adds, “but with the right village I think this will be OK.”
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