Kieran Webber
Director and Founder of CLUNK Magazine, CLUNK Events, and other CLUNK affiliate businesses. You’ll probably find me tucked away somewhere sending emails, listening to music, and creating content.
The Australian band who removed their music from Spotify earlier this year have today released a statement regarding an AI copy on the platform
Earlier this year King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their latest cut ‘Phantom Island’ to critical acclaim, yet the album would be on Spotify for mere weeks. Due to the ongoing investment into destructive AI war machines and general eye raising behaviour from CEO Daniel Ek, they removed their entire back catalog off the Spotify in protest. They are arguably the largest artist to do so in 2025 with many other artists following suite.
However, today, a few months later a generative AI is impersonating the band on the platform. It was first discovered by a reddit user who’s eagle eye spotted the track ‘Rattlesnake’ in their Spotify Release Radar, under the band name King Lizard Wizard, which is hilariously lazy. It bore a lot of glaring similarities to the real King Gizz track, which was released in 2016, down to the lyrics, which is not that hard, in fact its such a simple song you really don’t need an AI to do it.
Listen/watch ‘Rattlesnake’ here:
As of now, all songs have been removed from Spotify.
In a statement released by the band Stu McKenzie said: “I’m trying to see the irony in this situation.” Adding, “But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”
A Spotify rep said: “Spotify strictly prohibits any form of artist impersonation. The content in question was removed for violating our policies, and no royalties were paid out for any streams generated.”
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