Mood Machine
The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
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Mood Machine
Narrated by:
Liz Pelly
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Liz Pelly
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By:
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Liz Pelly
About this listen
'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.©2025 Elizabeth Pelly
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Critic reviews
'Pelly has written a groundbreaking examination of the music-streaming giant Spotify and its effects on 21st-century music. . . . A provocative, insightful, disturbing, and well-researched indictment of Spotify, the music industry, and streaming platforms, which daily mine billions of data bits from listeners/viewers to maximize profits and churn out musical formulas. Highly recommended.' -- Library Journal (starred review)
'A spirited debut. . . . Evocative prose and sharp analysis combine for a trenchant critique of the music streaming industry that calls for concrete reforms while asking bigger questions about "why universal access to music matters" and the cultural consequences of restricting its production and dissemination. The result is a perceptive assessment of the current musical landscape and an eye-opening glimpse into its possible future.' -- Publisher's Weekly
'A strong indictment to rouse consumers into considering just where our commitment to music is headed.' -- Kirkus Reviews
'The most important book about the music business in decades, a devastating indictment of its dominant digital platform, an urgent call to action for music lovers. Written crisply and reported bravely, Mood Machine reveals just how much of our culture we've handed over to one company, and what that means. Liz Pelly, with deep empathy for artists and zero tolerance for sociopathic tech-bro babble, is concerned not only about Spotify's parsimonious compensation for performers, but about the way in which it has already distorted our very concept of what music is, and what it is for.' -- Dan Charnas, New York Times bestselling and PEN award winning author of Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm, and The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop
'Do you remember the first song you streamed? Probably no more than you remember your first breath. Streaming and its main vehicle and commodifier, the Swedish company Spotify, have become so pervasive within music culture that its origins and impact are as hard to pin down as air. Liz Pelly's impeccably reported, persuasive book colors that air with detail and clarity, diligently and insightfully chronicling the 21st-century conquest of music lovers' souls. Mood Machine exhaustively explores the many aspects of Spotify's impact, from its tricky 'pro rata' economics to the pseudoscientific therapeutics of 'chill'; Pelly picks up every piece of the streaming puzzle and places it in perfect context. This book will intrigue the lay person, inform the artist, and cause music fans to think deeply about the hidden costs of making all those playlists.' -- Ann Powers, author of Tori Amos and Traveling
Very Important Book
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The shocking narration!
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We need collective action on streaming
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One sided but interesting, badly read
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This is not just the story of how Spotify stumbled into becoming the world's primary music streaming service, it's the story of the musically blind leading the musically blind down a dark alley that has all but completely killed music as a human expressive cultural form. From the consumer's reliance on playlists that provide mere background noise (muzak), to Spotify's forcing consumers down specific listening paths, to the grasping corporations inventively seeking more and more ways to pay less and less to artists, t's all here.
The question might remain, will music kill itself completely or can we somehow find a way back to properly valuing music and the artists who create it? It seems to me, though, that the real question after reading this book is, do we as a society even really care?
Compelling
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