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Mood Machine
The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist
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Brief Description
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 a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us...
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Mood Machine
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A SEARING INVESTIGATION INTO HOW SPOTIFY HAS DRASTICALLY CHANGED MUSIC FOREVER
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Description
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 a 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, personalised, 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 pounds 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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781399718851
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 13 March 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Hodder & Stoughton
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 153.0mm
Height: 234.0mm
Weight: 360g
Pages: 288
About the Author
Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in New York. She is at work on her first book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, to be published in 2025 by Astra House. Her byline has appeared at The Baffler, Guardian, NPR, Pioneer Works Broadcast, and many other outlets. She is an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch.
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Pre-orderMood Machine
'Passionate and rigorous... riveting' Financial Times '[a] cool-headed but powerful polemic...' Sunday Times 'A thoroughly convincing argument that Spotify's success has had a disastrous effect on pop music...' The Guardian 'A vital addition to the genre... arrives not a moment too soon' The Telegraph THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE HOW YOU THINK ABOUT, AND CHOOSE TO LISTEN TO, MUSIC Streaming is...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableOut 4 Aug 2026Pre-order -
Mood Machine
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...Paperback$5300Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks
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