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March 24, 2025: Liz Pelly, author, "Mood Machine"

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Today: Discussing Spotify with Liz Pelly, author of “Mood Machine”

Spotify is changing the music industry, and the culture at large, through its algorithms and surveillance. Liz Pelly discusses her important new book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.”

• Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly

• Active Listening: Jenn and Liz Pelly (by Damon Krukowski, Feb 3, 2025):

Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine is a thoroughly researched, superbly written takedown of Spotify’s privatization of audio space. The technology of streaming “was going to ‘level the playing field’ for artists, Spotify obsessively promised,” writes Liz. “What we actually got, though, were playlists heavily dominated by major label acts, endless feeds of neo-Muzak loaded with ghost artists – anonymous, stock music commissioned at a discount – and a series of pay-to-play schemes.” Mood Machine dissects each of these moves by Spotify, aided by “the major label oligopoly of Universal, Sony, and Warner,” laying bare the anti-musical motivations of its founders and investors.

Spotify paid billions to rights holders in 2024, and recording artists received none of that directly, by careful design. If anything, artists received a share of streaming income from their record labels calculated as if it were sales of music - that is, typically 15% of 1/3 a penny per stream (or $0.00045 a stream), less recoupable expenses. Which in practice often means, again, zero. I have friends with millions of streams on Spotify in 2024 and nothing, financially speaking, to show for it.

All this manipulation of language mirrors the manipulation of people – musicians and consumers – undertaken by the platform. It’s that manipulation which makes Spotify’s owners, stockholders and executives rich, while recording musicians hold down multiple jobs to try and earn a living while sustaining their careers.