At the place where music, technology and politics converge, you'll find... discord. A group of more than 380 musicians — including well-known indie artists like Ted Leo, Deerhoof, Damon & Naomi, Zola Jesus, Downtown Boys and Sheer Mag — pledged in an open letter on Thursday to cut all business ties with Amazon over the work of its gargantuan Amazon Web Services (AWS) subsidiary.
The letter, organized in part by the activist group
Fight For The Future
Today's letter comes one week after Black Madonna, a highly regarded and internationally popular DJ, expressed surprise at Amazon's involvement in a festival she had been booked to play. "If you were shocked I'd play for Amazon, well that makes two of us," she
wrote
Regardless, the festival's
current lineup
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the letter, or confirm whether or not any of the scheduled performers have canceled their contracts since its publication.
The letter is the latest public challenge to tech companies' relationships with agencies such as ICE and CBP. Last year, 650 employees of business software company Salesforce petitioned Marc Benioff, its CEO, to cancel its contract with CBP. In August, more than 1,000 employees of Google
did the same
Amazon Web Services bills itself as a "cloud platform" which provides the infrastructure — the highway part of the information superhighway — for things like the music that you hear when clicking play on Spotify, the show you're watching on Netflix, or the airline tickets you're thinking of purchasing on Expedia. (Spotify, for what it's worth, is now in the midst of
migrating
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