Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
Author: Liz Pelly
Rating: â 4/5
Date Read: 2025/03/14
Pages: 285
Iâm the type of obnoxious music snob who listens to albums from beginning to end. I will loudly proclaim that this is the correct way to listen to music, and everyone else is doing it wrong.
According to Spotify, Iâm the one whoâs doing it wrong. My search page suggests I listen to #recession pop and #pink pilates princess, whatever that means. Spotify wants to serve me six daily mixes, a Sabrina Carpenter Mix, a bunch of genre mixes, Netflix most played, The 2000s Indie Scene, This is Billie Eilish, Dive Bar Anthems, and Cruel Summer Radio.
They donât suggest many albums to me, even though my Wrapped in 2023 conceded that my listening character is âhypnotistâ which apparently means âYou like to play albums all the way through, from the opening track to the final note.â
How did we get to this point? Why is the largest streaming service treating music like an all-you-can-eat buffet of playlist-friendly singles instead of the carefully crafted tasting menus artists intend albums to be?
Part of the answer is music piracy. The Napster, et al, days were lots of fun from a listener perspective. Back then, I stuffed my iPod full of music that wasnât playing on the radio and couldnât be purchased from the Best Buy off the Tippecanoe exit in San Bernardino. Armed with Limewire and a Netscape tab open to Pitchfork, I discovered LCD Soundsystem, Belle and Sebastian, and Neutral Milk Hotel. I quickly became insufferable, and it didnât cost me a dime!
Obviously the music industry was less enthused, because I used to spend my entire allowance on CDs from that Best Buy. The major record labels (Universal, Sony, and Warner, who control ~85% of the market share) got together to figure out this existential crisis. How could they cater to listeners who wanted everything for free while continuing to maximize their profits and fuck over recording artists?
The answer was becoming strange bedfellows with a bunch of Swedish tech bros who saw a business opportunity in using streaming music to sell ads. Through backroom deals, the major labels quickly negotiated better terms for themselves than indies, invested as stakeholders, and got plum advertising deals to push their artists on the app. Nobody really cared about the music in this endeavor, nor did they advocate for musicians.
Yes, theyâre collecting a creepy amount of data on your listening habits. They tell advertisers they can exploit your moods to make you more susceptible to ads. And theyâre getting rich whilst only giving a pittance in royalties to musicians.
Part of the brilliance of Spotify was in creating playlists for passive listeners. These playlists are seeded with Spotify commissioned chill vibe songs that earn low royalties. According to Pelly, âIn the streaming era, the industry had identified a new type of target customer: the lean-back listener, who was less concerned with seeking out artists and albums, and was happy to simply double click on a playlist for focusing, working out, or winding down.â One Spotify employee claimed that the competition for the platform is silence (and people are afraid of silence).
This book is well researched, but eventually it starts to feel like too much outrage over the fact that major labels suck (we already knew this) combined with âthe youths arenât listening to music right.â In reality, people can listen however they want to whatever they want, and it doesnât impact me in the slightest. I can joke that the best way to listen is straight through an album, but if people get value from chill vibes playlists, who am I to judge?
Whatâs the solution to the Spotify payola, data collection, and monetization issues? I donât know, and neither does anyone else, mostly because the music industry has always been an exploitative place that constantly figures out new ways to fuck over artists. I like to pretend Iâm doing my part by purchasing vinyl records, but thatâs me justifying an expensive hobby. Anyway, if anyoneâs looking for me Iâll be sitting in a corner playing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea on my acoustic guitar and taking a break from streaming music. Is there a personalized Spotify playlist for that yet?