Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
Liz Pelly
Mar 2025 · Hachette UK
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About this ebook
'Passionate and rigorous... riveting' Financial Times
'[a] cool-headed but powerful polemic...' Sunday Times
' A studs-up assault on streaming economics' The Guardian
'A vital addition to the genre... arrives not a moment too soon' The Telegraph
An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.
Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.
Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.
For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.
'[a] cool-headed but powerful polemic...' Sunday Times
' A studs-up assault on streaming economics' The Guardian
'A vital addition to the genre... arrives not a moment too soon' The Telegraph
An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.
Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.
Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.
For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.
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About the author
Liz Pelly is a journalist living in New York. Her essays and reporting have appeared in the Baffler, where she is a contributing editor, as well as in the Guardian, NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and many other outlets. She frequently speaks about music streaming on radio shows and podcasts, including appearances on The New York Times' Popcast, NPR's Morning Edition, and others. Pelly teaches in the recorded music program at New York University and has spent over a decade involved in all-ages show booking.
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