Liz Pelly Wrote a Book About Spotify and the "Systemic Grift" of Streaming
a.k.a. An interview with the New York-based writer and editor, whose highly anticipated new title details the high costs of streaming convenience—and the unethical practices that make it possible.
The holidays are supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation. Freed from the shackles of their daily routines, people do all sorts of things to recharge their batteries. Some visit friends and family. Some head back to their hometown, or hop on a plane to some far-flung corner of the world. Others indulge themselves by catching up on movies and television shows they’d missed throughout the year, or by picking up a book they’d been meaning to read.
I fell into that latter category, although I’d be hesitant to describe what I read as an indulgence. You know how people will often say that a book is so good that they couldn’t put it down? Well, the book I read was so good that I absolutely had to put it down, over and over again. Its contents were simply too infuriating for me to process more than a few chapters at a time.
That book? Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, the long-awaited debut title from Liz Pelly.
To be clear, it wasn’t Pelly’s prose that got me upset. The New York-based writer and editor has long been one of the music world’s most thoughtful streaming critics, and her new book builds on what was already an impressive body of work, tracking the rise of Spotify and specifically highlighting the company’s extractive practices, along with the many ways those practices have upended the music landscape, often at the expense of artists. And while readers who’ve been closely following the streaming discourse in recent years (myself included) might be tempted to assume that there’s nothing new to say on the topic—after all, there’s no shortage of “Spotify is bad” takes on the internet—Mood Machine genuinely breaks new ground.
Some of that new ground was revealed last month in an excerpt of the book that was published in Harper’s Magazine. That piece shed light on the company’s use of so-called “fake artists,” even revealing that the program actually had an official name, Perfect Fit Content. The rest of Mood Machine goes even deeper. Prioritizing research over mere conjecture, Pelly debunks Spotify’s repeated claims that the company was set up to “save” the music industry from piracy, details its heavy reliance on user surveillance and data collection, and points out the myriad ways it has actively blurred the lines between artistry and commerce, usually in effort to reduce its own costs. In many ways, the book is a story of wealth extraction, corporate consolidation and the merciless flattening of music culture, and that’s why I had to keep putting it down. Although Mood Machine compellingly makes a damning case against Spotify—one that also indicts the major labels and calls into question the ethics of the wider streaming economy—the information it reveals is sometimes so frustrating and / or bleak that even already-cynical music fans will likely throw up their hands in aggravation.
That’s not Pelly’s fault, and to her credit, the book offers more than doom and gloom. Although she does clearly state that there’s no quick, one-size-fits-all solution out there, she also makes a point to talk about the drive for streaming reform, shining a light on the music labor movement and advocating for various alternatives to the corporate-controlled status quo.
With Mood Machine being officially released this week, Pelly will likely be talking quite a bit about Spotify and streaming in the days ahead, most notably on her book tour, which also kicks off this week and will be taking her to various cities across the US during the next month or so. Ahead of that, however, she was kind enough to talk to me for First Floor. Over the course of a long call last week, we of course spoke about the eye-opening contents of her book, but what ultimately unfolded was a broader conversation about streaming and its wide-ranging effects on not just the music industry, but the whole of music culture.