Well, I'll never look at Spotify and music the same again after reading Liz Pelly's Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025). Music matters, obviously, and Pelly dives deeply into Spotify, and the music industry, and has already forced me to improve my listening habits.
Mood Machine is superb modern journalism that I never would have found unless I read The Guardian's book section. The same thing happened with another book I recently recommended, Careless People, about Facebook/Meta's immoral algorithms and horrific political influence. These two necessary books tackle Big Tech and its ginormous influence, and I say the United States' current zeitgeist needs to focus on unregulated technology much, much more.
As a music consumer, my biggest takeaway from Mood Machine is this: I'll never, ever, ever listen to a playlist created by Spotify again. If I'm looking for new, independent music, the KCRW app is a much better answer. I want playlists created by people, not an algorithm. Spotify playlists also have a lot of filler and music promoted by record companies. Some of it is created by AI, and music companies often pay musicians a pittance to create instrumental music and then keep the rights.
Immediately, on page 3 of Mood Machine's introduction, we learn that Universal, Sony and Warner own 70 percent of recorded music. When Spotify launched in 2008, those majors owned 18 percent of the company. It's less now, and Spotify has grown to have have a market cap of approximately $88 billion. The company's founders, Martin Lorenzen and Daniel Ek, have estimated net worths of $9-11 billion.
Streaming accounts for 84 percent of recorded music revenue with Spotify leading the market with 30 percent of that. When Pelly walks the reader through how the revenue works in a detailed, thorough way, it becomes utterly apparent that Spotify is an immoral Big Tech company promoting corporate interests and billionaire culture. Pelly never writes that, and I applaud her for her restraint and objectivity. But, essentially, that's what we're facing with streaming, Spotify and the current state of what many of us adore — music.
It's safe to say musicians don't get paid from streaming. Whoever holds the rights to a song streamed receives .0035 cents for each play. Many times, the record company owns the rights, or a high percentage of that. In fair indie label deals, it's often a 50/50 split. But even if the musician full-on owned the rights, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib estimated that it would take more than 800,000 streams per month to equal a $15/hour job.
In my lifetime, music always has been a commodity. I encountered awesome music scenes in both Cleveland and Columbus in the '90s. However, my realized fear now is that younger generations of musicians see the Internet as the only possible way to develop a following. Music scenes are not what they used to be. I'm still hoping that revivals of low-tech music scenes happen, and perhaps if I search it out more, I can find some cool stuff out here in Southern California. But streaming reigns supreme, regardless.
Back to Spotify, I must admit that I briefly loved the app. Around pandemic times, I discovered legitimate musicians solely through Spotify who I had never heard of. I actually attended two concerts of new artists to me, Brothertiger and George Clanton, with my beloved buddy, Ganley. Fast forward a year or two later, and finding new appealing music on the app stopped. The algorithm jumped the shark, so I moved on to KCRW, word of mouth and Shazaming random songs I hear at coffee shops and in public.
Back to Mood Machine, I must admit that I am not giving the book justice; it's a tour de force. Some of the concepts in the book are new to me and not easy to understand. For example, I was shocked to hear Spotify's ad revenue is only roughly 12 percent. The bulk of its revenue is selling users' data because, apparently, Spotify's data is extensive because it tracks every single second of music listened to or changed. It literally can learn a user's typical mood throughout the day, so that data is hugely valuable to outside companies.
While I learned a lot from the book, and don't totally show that here, the book has some flaws. One is that it can be dense in parts and can take a while to digest the information. Also, a few ideas, such as the importance of artists' collectives, may be too idealistic and not make a dent in the current state of music. In addition, maybe there was a bit too much on Spotify's history.
Mood Machine has truly gotten me to be more aware of what exactly I'm listening to. As a self-proclaimed local and indie music champion, the book has gotten me to be fully aware that the majority of so-called independent music on Spotify is not even close. An indie aesthetic is far from a band on an independent record label.
Irony. I used to think the Internet would help people become more conscious consumers, but apps like Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, TikTok and others exploit the masses' data and keep people scrolling and streaming in an unhappy digital web of overconsumption.
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