Mood Machine

The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

By: Liz Pelly

Narrated by: Liz Pelly

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize
Winner of a Certificate of Merit from the 2025 ARSC Awards for Excellence
A New Yorker, GQ, The Daily Telegraph (London), and Library Journal Best Book of 2025
A 2025 Washington Post Notable Nonfiction
An NPR Books We Love Most pick

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.

Fuck Spotify

Very Important Info about the worst thing that ever happened to the music industry. It’s well researched

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!

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!

The most precise and thorough indictment of Spotify I've heard.

Hopefully this well thought out argument will move people to action! Great case against Spotify! My suggestion is to listen at 1.5× speed tho. You'll thank me later

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.