Most of us use Spotify. Even more of us use Spotify on a daily basis. Whether it’s the free version or the premium – or even better, the student premium which college students get for a cheaper value – the streaming service is everywhere. In her book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” author Liz Pelly discusses what Spotify has done to the music industry.
Pelly visited the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Thursday, Feb. 20 to talk about her newly released book, “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” which came out on Jan. 7. Pelly is a journalist, writer, editor and adjunct instructor at the New York University Tisch School of Arts whose writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian, Rolling Stone, NPR and The Baffler.
Pelly also mentioned she was glad to be back in Massachusetts, as she lived in the state during her undergraduate years studying magazine journalism at Boston University. Her talk took place in the Integrative Learning Center’s communication hub.
“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,” is the quick blurb that the Simon & Schuster website gives for the book. Pelly expanded on the topic during her talk.
Pelly’s research on Spotify began in 2016. She has been involved in journalism and the independent music scene, both topics she has expressed passion about for a number of years. Before writing her first article about Spotify, Pelly had read a book titled “The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age” (2014) by Astra Taylor.
“[The book] got me thinking a lot about the importance of interrogating the influence of corporate consolidation on our digital lives … I was pretty optimistic about the potential of the internet to democratize access to culture,” Pelly said.
In the introduction of her book, which she read aloud to the audience, she wrote that a friend of hers in the music industry suggested that she “investigate how the major labels were influencing Spotify playlists.” She elaborated how 2016 was an interesting year to begin researching this topic, as it had been 10 years since the company was founded in Stockholm, Sweden.
For those familiar with the Spotify platform, the app curates playlists and suggests them to its users. As one enters the app, a myriad of ready-made playlists appear alongside the playlists the user may have created themselves. Spotify promised that these pre-made playlists were going to “level the playing field for artists,” Pelly said.
“What we actually got though,” Pelly began, “were playlists dominated by major label acts, endless feeds of Neo-Muzak,” – a term used to describe artificial intelligence-generated background music – “loaded with ghost artists, anonymous stock music commissioned at a discount and a series of pay-to-play schemes.” These practices hurt independent and small artists.
“[Spotify] had worked tirelessly to position itself as a neutral platform, a date-driven meritocracy that was rewriting the rules of the music business through the power of its playlists and algorithms,” Pelly read aloud. As further explained by the author, it is the perception and selling of music as less of an art form and more as a utility. Musicians are being used more as “content creators” than the real artists that they are, in the interest of money and “vibes.”
Having a background in journalism, Pelly conducted most of her research for this project by carrying out interviews. She interviewed musicians, past and present Spotify employees, people who worked in music pre-streaming era, music labor groups and Swedish music reporters. In addition to that, she utilized records and documents, in-person observations, music press archives, books, papers, Spotify’s literature and archives and digital ephemera including emails, X posts and text messages.
Pelly went on about how there are three big things that Spotify did to the music world. First, there is “playlistification” which is, as she explained, “transforming music into new types of media products; gatekeeper power; ghost artists.” The problem with ghost artists is that instrumental focus or sleep playlists that Spotify produces are “populated by low-cost stock music commissioned … chances are you are listening to music that has been commissioned at a discount to lower royalty rate by artists that don’t exist,” Pelly said.
Next, “personalization” has had an impact on music because it has changed the meaning of music, and there has been an “algorithmic reimagination of music culture.” Lastly, “platform power” has reimagined musicians more as customers, and that their music is a promotional product rather than art.
Music is important and can be personal. The problem that Pelly focuses on is not about the listeners, it is about the producers. Users listen to what the algorithm tells them they will like; many times, the system is correct. This causes an aversion to discovering new music, especially music created by smaller artists.
Music is an important art form that has been forced into a greedy system. This is not a piece to tell anyone to never use Spotify again, just to explore what else is out there. Expand the listening, discover new music and support independent musicians.
Victoria Tibets can be reached at [email protected].
