In an article for Fast Company last year, Chris Stokel-Walker raised an alarming question about a certain mostly-ubiquitous ...

The Swedish tech giant has rigged the music industry against artists, mined listeners for data, and made music boring for everyone. Or is that just what the major recording labels want you to believe?

“The very concept of Spotify,” writes Liz Pelly in Mood Machine, “was designed for the benefit of extremely popular, major label music.” When Pelly began reporting on Spotify in 2016, it was the ...

We have crested the wave of 2025, and are currently gliding into its second half. Smooth sailing from here on out, surely.

It was all the fault of Scandinavian social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Sweden became a global center for music piracy largely through a perfect storm of universal and ...

In Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, Liz Pelly writes about Spotify from multiple angles: from the perspective of artistes, record labels, Spotify execs, and ...

Perhaps the move to streaming—the subject of Liz Pelly’s new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist —makes that question moot.

Kate Grenville’s moving book follows her pilgrimage through the places her family stories happened, to put the stories and the First Peoples back into the narrative. Our reviewers cast their eyes over ...

Spotify was started, according to its official claims, because its founders “love music and piracy was killing it”. In Mood Machine, music journalist Liz Pelly argues this is rewriting history. In ...

And this affects the music we listen to. Two books about the company were recently released, detailing its inner workings and business practices: You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favorite Song (2024), by ...

Spotify was started, according to its official claims, because its founders "love music and piracy was killing it". In Mood Machine, music journalist Liz Pelly argues this is rewriting history. In ...