Mood Machine

If you run in indie music news circles, you've probably heard of this new book making waves. New York-based music journalist Liz Pelly has spent years talking to music industry workers, artists, and ex-Spotify employees to gather a story that answers the questions most people never think to ask: How exactly does Spotify work, and what is it doing to music (and everyone involved)?

There's much to be said about meagre payouts to artists, withheld royalties, playlist culture, and all the scams that proliferate the industry in pursuit of success on the industry leader in music streaming. But the thing I most applaud Pelly for undertaking with this book is the mere exercise of trying to make sense of it all, presenting the ins-and-outs of what it takes to keep an empire like this afloat. The average consumer rarely takes into account the ethics or broader impacts of consumption of material things they can touch and hold; in the case of music, how much more removed from consciousness must the ephemeral nature of leasing access to recordings stored in the cloud be?

I'm looking forward to diving deep into this book, and taking in the grand scope of Pelly's findings. A lot of this stuff information, I don't expect to be new, but I'm keen to perhaps take away new and added perspectives on how to better communicate the importance of imagining and engaging in alternative ways to support music to average, non-industry folks who likely haven't had to think about this stuff.

I'm also planning on hosting a book club to read through this book with folks in Toronto who might be interested as well, so stay tuned for news on that!

From Simon & Schuster:

Drawing on over one 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.