Mood Machine - by Liz Pelly (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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 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.

Review Quotes

"Written by a fierce advocate for artists' rights and one of the streaming economy's most dogged critics, this rousing industry probe has the tenacity to challenge algorithmic hegemony and the conviction to imagine a more sustainable future." -Sheldon Pearce, editor, NPR Music "Surely the best present of all is to manually thwart the dominance of streaming algorithms ... a very good companion gift to any vinyl-based subscription would be Liz Pelly's excellent Mood Machine." -Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker "This book totally changed how I thought about music and the way big tech changes our consciousness." -Brooklyn Public Library's Favorite Books of 2025 "Pelly helps us see this business model as haphazard and contingent, not immutable or inevitable. . . . Pelly's focus on cracking the black box of the platform itself, not least through exhaustive interviews with insiders and musicians, gives us the first clear picture of Spotify's transfiguration of the musical field." -Mitch Therieau, The Nation "Pelly's writing has long helped shape discourse about these bigger questions. Mood Machine is no exception: Before the book has even been released, its initial excerpt in Harper's caused no less than Jack Antonoff to comment that Pelly's writing about how streaming services devalue music 'sums it up perfectly.'" -Jonathan Bernstein, Rolling Stone "Pelly is a romantic, but her book isn't an exercise in nostalgia. It's about how we have come to view art and creativity, what it means to be an individual, and what we learn when we first hum along to a beloved pop song." -Hua Hsu, The New Yorker "Pelly has established herself as the most lucid and rigorous critic of the rot at the heart of an apparently magical service. Her new book, Mood Machine, promises to become a new standard text for tech-skeptic artists." -Franz Nicolay, The Washington Post "Mood Machine persuasively demonstrates how Spotify guides its users down certain roads-but it's not impossible to choose a detour." -Brad Shoup, The Atlantic

About the Author

Liz Pelly is a journalist living in New York. Her essays and reporting have appeared in The Baffler, where she is a contributing editor, as well as in The Guardian, NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and many other outlets. She frequently speaks about music streaming on radio shows and podcasts, including appearances with The New York Times Popcast, NPR's Morning Edition, and others. Pelly teaches in the recorded music program at New York University, and has spent over a decade involved in all-ages show booking. Learn more at LizPelly.info and follow her on social media @LizPelly.