
Mood Machine
The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist
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Narrated by:
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Liz Pelly
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By:
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Liz Pelly
About this listen
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
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Story
In My Remaining Years, by creative juggernaut Jean Grae, debunks the myth that coming-of-age narratives should be reserved for the kids, providing a much-needed rallying cry for those of us still trying to figure it out in our forties. These laugh-out-loud essays cover everything from aging gracefully, what happens when you look for community and almost start a cult, befriending childhood demons, gender fluidity in middle age, the cost of being too fabulous, and the various gymnastics we do to avoid becoming our parents, taking us from her childhood in 1980s NYC to present-day Baltimore.
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Her amazing voice and storytelling ability
- By Roxanne Shante on 03-20-25
By: Jean Grae
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Character Limit
- How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
- By: Kate Conger, Ryan Mac
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become inextricable from the social media platform that until 2023 was known as Twitter. Started in the mid-2000s as a playful microblogging platform, Twitter quickly became a vital nexus of global politics, culture, and media—where the retweet button could instantly catapult any idea to hundreds of millions of screens around the world, unleashing raw collective emotion like nothing else before.
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Depressing but engrossing
- By Jason Jablonski on 10-25-24
By: Kate Conger, and others
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House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- By: Eva Dou
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
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Excellent work
- By Suzi on 05-26-25
By: Eva Dou
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The Art of Statistics
- How to Learn from Data
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence - and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders.
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very good statistics overview
- By Tom on 11-29-19
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The Optimist
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman’s rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham’s protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk.
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The author is a big fan of Sam
- By Timpboy on 06-28-25
By: Keach Hagey
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The Otherwhere Post
- By: Emily J. Taylor
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost everything: her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots. Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words: Your father was innocent. To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds.
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Just incredibly boring
- By L. Lehmann on 05-27-25
By: Emily J. Taylor
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AI Snake Oil
- What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
- By: Sayash Kapoor, Arvind Narayanan
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You’re not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn’t, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don’t work, and probably never will.
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Mediocre
- By Amazon Customer on 05-20-25
By: Sayash Kapoor, and others
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Embers of the Hands
- Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
- By: Eleanor Barraclough
- Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society.
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Author is an excellent reader!
- By K on 02-11-25
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Little Bosses Everywhere
- How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
- By: Bridget Read
- Narrated by: Nikki Massoud
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and President Donald Trump, all while eroding public institutions and the social safety net.
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Well researched.
- By Donald Schuster on 05-08-25
By: Bridget Read
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We Do Not Part
- A Novel
- By: Han Kang, E. Yaewon - translator, Paige Aniyah Morris - translator
- Narrated by: Greta Jung
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step.
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Powerful, Tough Listen
- By ncnickle on 01-26-25
By: Han Kang, and others
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The Hacienda
- By: Isabel Cañas
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal, Lee Osorio
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined. Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her. Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.
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Latine Gothic Horror
- By Mary Rodriguez on 03-07-23
By: Isabel Cañas
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Revenge
- The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power
- By: Alex Isenstadt
- Narrated by: Alan Peterson
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of the last four years, the American public looked on as the former president faced a series of daunting obstacles to return to the White House. The lingering cloud of January 6, a shadow effort within the Republican establishment to defeat him in the primary, multiple indictments, assassination attempts, and an 11th hour change of his opponent all threatened to derail his return to power at any moment.
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if you followed the election, you already know most of it, but it's still a great listen.
- By Tony on 03-22-25
By: Alex Isenstadt
Thank you Liz for this overview!
Great Confirmation of Curation in Music
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Not just important and alarming insights into the music industry, but of society and culture
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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.
Important Listen about the Future of Big Business
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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.
A sad day for musicians
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I’m so glad someone wrote about this topic
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Important writing!
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Important book for rethinking the way we treat music culture
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Poor narration gets in the way
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An Important Book
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the secrets of spotify revealed!
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