Mood Machine

The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

By: Liz Pelly

Narrated by: Liz Pelly

An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

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.

©2025 Liz Pelly (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

Great Confirmation of Curation in Music

Enjoying this book overall, as an Artist Manager who works in licensing as well. This book is a great observation point on the music scape of Spotify and streaming. I believe after finishing this book, a great discourse is within approach of those who want to create change actively in the industry.

Thank you Liz for this overview!

Important Listen about the Future of Big Business

Let's address the elephant in the room. The narration here is rough. Very rough. I had to crank up the speed to 1.20x. It didn't fix the poor narration, but it certainly helped.

As for the book itself, Mood Machine is a scary, dense, meticulously researched preview of the techno nightmare to come. As as an illustrator working in a very non-art sector, I can say with certainty that the terrible businesses practices described in this book are not isolated to Spotify. Welcome to the 21st century. What Liz Pelly describes here is infecting your life whether you know it or not.

Personally, I'd like to see her tackle more company practices as the professional word is consumed subscription models and AI. What we see with Spotify is a microcosm of the modern business world. It started with music and spread to visual design (looking at subscription based art software) and that led to chain reaction reaching into many fields including aerospace.

Mood Machine is a great starting point to see where things started and a terrifying glimpse into what we can expect as companies grow larger and more controlling. While I don't agree with the author's ideas on how to combat this type of rampant greed, I respect her concepts and can understand where she is coming from. I also don't subscribe to the sweeping generalization that "capitalism is bad."

Unfortunately, many proposed solutions are simply too little, too late. But I think this is important reading because if people don't act, the widespread control that Spotify has over music and culture will spread to other corporations and sectors. As stated above, it's already started, and many people don't realize how much it affects their lives. Remember, if the business model works for Spotify, it will work for any other company looking to gain a stranglehold in their respective fields.

A sad day for musicians

There were many things I liked about this book but in the end I was frustrated by the writer’s constant repetition and padding to make this a book rather than a news article. The most interesting parts were the early history of Spotify and the chapter on how they pay royalties.
She seems surprised that the streaming model for music listening did not benefit the artists as much as it did the record companies. Same as it ever was. The fact is that piracy and streaming music platforms have devalued music and unfortunately there is no turning back. I am so glad that years ago I decided to get a good paying job and continue to play and record the music I love and not cater to the music industry.

I’m so glad someone wrote about this topic

Kudos to the author for doing the research and bringing this information to public light. “Spotify is the worst” is no hot new take, but I feel like this book highlighted that it is somehow even worse than we ever thought.

Not just important and alarming insights into the music industry, but of society and culture

A must read for music lovers, makers and everything aside and in between. Not just important and alarming insights into the modern day streaming business and music industry, but of our modern day society and culture. A deep dive into a very detailed investigation by Liz Pelly about how consumerism and big business is, and has been, shaping our lives and how we consume art and creativity. I was glued to it chapter by chapter!

Important book for rethinking the way we treat music culture

Pelly makes a compelling case to rethink the way we consume music in the modern age. Digital "saviors", as has been the case with most aspects of culture, tend to devour something in order to maximize profit and Spotify is no different even if it claims it is so

Poor narration gets in the way

The material is well researched and the topics covered in the book illustrate how streaming platforms and major labels are ripping off artists and deceiving their customers. However, the narrator has two cadences that simply repeat through the entire reading, making this audiobook an unpleasant and difficult listening experience.

An Important Book

Every music lover and musician should read as we try to construct fairer systems of artistic development and music distribution.

the secrets of spotify revealed!

what I loved about this book that Liz probably wrote so well, was how she detailed the different types of abuse that Spotify brought to the music business. There are so many insider secrets that you would never know as just a Spotify user, but after reading this book you can realize how much they have prayed on the system of both its users and it’s creators. Fascinating read!

Intolerable audio narration--sing-song, upspeak...

...and vocal fry.

I cannot even HEAR the words though this horrendous audio narration. I am not kidding when I say that EVERY sentence ends in upseak, vocal fry, or an outright question when it's a statement.

Remember when Valley Girl-speak was a thing? Did we think it could get worse? We didn't but it did. I felt like someone who had never heard a foreigner speak English and I was confronted with a heavy accent, mispronunciations, emphasis in strange places so that I couldn't understand the speaker.

Her editors should be pelted with spit balls for allowing her to narrate her own book.

Also, sorry, I'm a woman so I feel bad saying this but how are we to take her seriously when she sounds like a 16-yr-old ditzy girl?

I'm returning this. Save your money/a credit and read this in print if the subject interests you.