Publishers Weekly
11/11/2024
Spotify is a cesspool of corruption that deincentivizes the creation of original songs and rips off artists, according to this spirited debut. Music journalist Pelly critiques the streaming service’s pretense of making lesser-known musicians’ tracks available to a world of listeners, arguing that the platform favors musicians signed to major labels, who receive millions of dollars in advances and free advertising, while obscure indie artists struggle to get by on royalties of $0.0035 per stream. Meanwhile, the platform creates playlists of anodyne background music with bland stylistic strictures and a “muted, mid-tempo, and melancholy” sound popularized by mainstream performers like Billie Eilish and now replicated by AI programs. Evocative prose and sharp analysis (“The suggestion that the businesses of pop music, mood-enhancing background sounds, and independent art-making ought to all live on the same platform... is a recipe for everything being flattened out into one ceaseless chill-out stream”) combine for a trenchant critique of the music streaming industry that calls for concrete reforms (federal legislation that guarantees artists adequate streaming royalties, nonprofit streaming services) 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. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Pelly helps us see this business model as haphazard and contingent, not immutable or inevitable. . . . Pelly’s focus on cracking the black box of the platform itself, not least through exhaustive interviews with insiders and musicians, gives us the first clear picture of Spotify’s transfiguration of the musical field.”
—Mitch Therieau, The Nation
“Pelly’s writing has long helped shape discourse about these bigger questions. Mood Machine is no exception: Before the book has even been released, its initial excerpt in Harper’s caused no less than Jack Antonoff to comment that Pelly’s writing about how streaming services devalue music ‘sums it up perfectly.’”
—Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone
"Pelly is a romantic, but her book isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. It’s about how we have come to view art and creativity, what it means to be an individual, and what we learn when we first hum along to a beloved pop song."
—Hua Hsu, The New Yorker
"Pelly has established herself as the most lucid and rigorous critic of the rot at the heart of an apparently magical service. Her new book, Mood Machine, promises to become a new standard text for tech-skeptic artists."
—Franz Nicolay, The Washington Post
“Mood Machine persuasively demonstrates how Spotify guides its users down certain roads—but it’s not impossible to choose a detour.”
—Brad Shoup, The Atlantic
"With this cool-headed but powerful polemic against letting the algorithm take charge, Pelly issues a sombre warning against chilling out as you click on the Sleepwalking into Oblivion playlist."
—Sunday Times
“Passionate and rigorous... Pelly has reported on Spotify’s impact on musicians for the best part of a decade, and she [...] hammers home her message to wake us from our streaming-induced stupor... Uplifting and instructive.”
—Max Liu, The Financial Times
"Tension between art and commerce is hardly new . . . Yet Spotify has proved quite innovative at finding ways to update the industry’s less savory traditions, and Ms. Pelly meticulous documentation makes Mood Machine an important book."
—Frank Rose, The Wall Street Journal
“Mood Machine stands out as the definitive book on how we should think about Spotify as a phenomenon, not necessarily because her account is the most comprehensively reported, but because Pelly provides a sustained look at how the company has affected, and continues to affect, the world it took over.”
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture
"A reported look inside the guts of an app millions of us use daily. The book digs into the app's origins, the economic toll its influence has taken on artists, but also how it's shaped the way we all listen to music – or, maybe I should say, muzak?"
—NPR
"Drawing on interviews with musicians, industry experts, and former employees, journalist Liz Pelly traces the evolution of Spotify, from its beginnings to its current status as a streaming giant — and argues that the platform’s model is focused on maximizing profits at the expense of both users and artists. Ann Powers says, “Pelly picks up every piece of the streaming puzzle and places it in perfect context. This book will intrigue the layperson, inform the artist, and cause music fans to think deeply about the hidden costs of making all those playlists.”"
—A BookBub Best Nonfiction of 2025
"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
"We know that Big Tech and Spotify have reshaped music listening – and at a cost. But that impact is often hidden inside a black box, closely guarded by its masters’ secrecy and mythmaking. Liz Pelly is one of the few people who managed to get inside that black box, meaning her upcoming book will be essential."
—Peter Kirn, CDM
"Compiling abundant research and interviews, many with former Spotify employees, Pelly's book provides an insightful look at the app's role in the music business."
—Grace Wehniainen, A Bustle Most Anticipated Book of the Winter
"Pelly’s advice is for those who love music to become more engaged listeners."
—The Sunday Times
"Cool-headed but powerful"
—The Week
"Mood Machine ... is a vital addition to the genre, and arrives not a second too soon."
—The Telegraph
"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
“Here is the clearest and most thorough job of reporting-and-critique I've encountered on how Spotify, through a juncture of corporate interests, data science, surveillance, vibes theory, and cliché, has engineered a zombie impostor of musical culture. Liz Pelly helps you see and hear how it happened. Her work is an act of decency against degeneration.”
—Ben Ratliff, author of Every Song Ever
“Mood Machine is so much more than a book about music streaming. Liz Pelly has painted a portrait of modern capitalism through the lens of Spotify, a mega-app that manages to encompass all the ways that Big Tech is both homogenizing and alienating, dulling our senses while offering the illusion of abundance. Spotify, in Pelly's hands, is a fun house mirror-world where our musical tastes and desires are warped to fit the needs of accumulation rather than art.”
—Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes and Work Won't Love You Back
"Much has been said about the somewhat tense relationship between artists, listeners and streaming. But with Mood Machine, Liz Pelly has written the definitive breakdown of Spotify and its influence on the music industry. Anyone wanting to learn more about playlisting, and to understand why they like what they like, should buy this book."
—Marcus J. Moore, critically-acclaimed author of High and Rising (A Book About De La Soul)
"We know intuitively that our relationship with music is changing - often for the worse. But to read how and why this relationship has broken down is devastating and infuriating. Liz Pelly lands this story on a hopeful note that will galvanize those of us who dream of a different future for the music industry. I couldn't put it down."
—Zoë Schiffer, author of Extremely Hardcore
"Recorded music has been a commodity since wax cylinders, but few writers have captured the current dizzying state of its commodification like Liz Pelly. In Mood Machine, she brings an insider's knowledge of the ways that Spotify and algorithmic recommendations have flattened our experiences as listeners, consumers, and participants in the music ecosystem. This isn't only a book about a crooked business, it's an argument for re-centering humanity in our listening habits."
—John Lingan, author of A Song For Everyone: The Story of Creedence Clearwater Revival
“My musical career happened at the end of the previous century, when major labels simply co-opted independently-created fads to maintain industry dominance. Mood Machine gives the definitive account of what followed: Spotify, an unprecedented wealth extraction machine which flattened music into metadata and exchanged inspiration for mere engagement. Author Liz Pelly writes with a reporter's instinct, a historian's reverence, a surgeon's precision, and a punk rocker's heart. Read this book, then joyfully go forth and work against everything its subject stands for.”
—Tom Maxwell, author of Hell and A Really Strange and Wonderful Time
Library Journal
★ 12/20/2024
A seasoned music journalist, Pelly has written a groundbreaking debut that examines the music-streaming giant Spotify (with its 626 million users) and its effect on 21st-century music. Spotify was established by Swedish advertisers Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006 as a streaming platform to attract advertising clients; in 2011, it expanded into the United States. Demonstrating the transformation of the company from a song aggregator to a music gatekeeper, Pelly focuses on the creation of highly edited, mood-related playlists, which personalize and filter content for listeners who want near-continuous background music. She explains how playlists, first human-created and then algorithm-generated, favor major record labels and the companies that own them (like Universal, Sony, and Warner) in a new version of the old music industry model. Pelly contends that the streaming service has a disastrous effect on most musical artists, who barely earn a minimum-wage livelihood due to a punitive royalty system. As an antidote to Spotify, she champions free streaming services at public libraries and public funding for musicians. VERDICT A provocative, insightful, disturbing, and well-researched indictment of Spotify, the music industry, and streaming platforms, which daily mine billions of data bits from users to maximize profits and churn out musical formulas. Highly recommended.—Dr. Dave Szatmary
Kirkus Reviews
2024-10-26
Demystifying Spotify.
In this age of platform capitalism, with streaming service content whizzing through our brains, the story of Spotify’s success is uniquely instructive. Emerging in 2006, after the first forays of Napster and Pirate Bay into the ethical murkiness of peer-to-peer file sharing, Spotify has grown to mammoth proportions. Backed by stringent research, Pelly writes convincingly about how independent musicians, initially convinced of the purported democracy of the platform, have become subservient to big-business interests, like the majority of their 20th-century forebears. The algorithms behind Spotify’s curated playlists, the passivity of its paying listeners engendered by those playlists’ “we’ll do it for you” ethos, and the decline in intelligent listening before data-driven systems tell a story of essentially translating customers’ postmodern laissez-faire into hard coin. Pelly argues that the company has affected the quality of music itself, turning songs into little more than “streambait”: Producers position the catchy chorus of a song, for example, at the very beginning of a track to hook listeners in the attempt to charm them from clickingNext, or they hire music production companies to write songs that will optimize income across multiple playlist categories. It will then be no surprise when one discovers Spotify has long embraced “ID syncing,” the act of selling a user’s personal data to other companies—and serving up music generated by AI, leaving even less room at the table for individual, all-too-human artists.
A strong indictment to rouse consumers into considering just where our commitment to music is headed.
.
