Liz Pelly vs. Algatorial Pissings and the Vibes Cartel

BOOK REVIEW: Come to 'Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist' for the reporting. Stay for the love of music, and the insights that exemplify the struggle for 2025

Even before it officially dropped in early January, Liz Pelly’s book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, was making waves in music journalism circles. The interest was partially stirred by the fact that Pelly was a trusted reporter who since 2016 had written numerous investigative essays about the company and the overall streaming economy for The Baffler. And that her work carries a reputation for no-nonsense, artist-activist perspective, informed by experiences as both a musician and longtime musicker at some of NYC’s great DIY venues of the past decade. (Full disclosure: Liz is a colleague many times over, and someone I consider an ally and a friend. She appeared on Dada Strain Radio, talking about the book, playing community indie/punk artists she reps.)

But as the January of the digital knives unfolded, Mood Machine transcended the music-crit backwaters. Two of my favorite music-informed critics working MSM outlets, Hua Hsu and Ann Powers, favorably tackled the book; lots of good reviews poured in, and Harper’s even excerpted a chapter, putting Mood Machine on its print cover. With the social destruction achieved by our feed-driven digital hellscape on everybody’s lips—the kleptocrat oligarchs occupying stage-left, at the Orange dictator’s coronation—there was broader context for Mood Machine’s take on our society’s accelerating vibes shift. Pelly’s thorough reporting of how an era- and category-defining multi-national contributes to the treatment of essential culture workers in the new economy, provided a clear specific example of the enshittification of our overall reality. Even as it quietly indicts every user, present company included, judgement silently emanating from her just-the-artivist-facts POV.

And yet, Mood Machine is not simply another how-modern-life-got-to-be-rubbish investigation. There’s an undercurrent to this book’s telling of Spotify’s development as a company, its undervaluing of music as an art-form, its demotion of listening from an active to a passive act, its flattening of all recordings into mass-commodified utilities, its manipulation of streaming surveillance technology, its illusion of frictionless control, its shaping listening behavior, and on and on, with examples aplenty. But against this remorseless tide of institutional largess and data optimization, Pelly patrols the musicking outskirts, simultaneously narrating the counter-attack through contrast and personal stories. The clearly inferred love of music, sound and community-building; its importance on a personal, human level, its diversity and variety, its tactile and ceremonial magnificence, its social value. These testimonials sprout like flowers amidst the concrete, acquiring their own contextual power. And giving Mood Machine an easy-to-hear heart that such books rarely possess.