"Serendipitously, I'm writing this review as I sit on my porch listening to someone play jazz covers across the street. Today is Open Tuning, a free neighbourhood music festival where musicians set up performance-shop on front yards and sidewalks. I'm watching pedestrians wander into the vicinity of a makeshift stage, stay, chat with one another, vibe, and pay attention to the talent and skill of the artists in front of them.

Spotify would rather all of that not exist.

Why? You already know the answer -- 'profit' -- but Liz Pelly's book demonstrates that the collateral damage of it is even worse than you think.

Spotify, for anyone who doesn't know and as you'll learn early on in Mood Machine, was born out of a desire not to revolutionize music, as is often touted -- but to make a fuck ton of money selling ads. Music ended up the traffic source, and the success of Spotify as a company has had massive impacts across the music industry. These impacts, or some of them, are catalogued deftly and thoughtfully, with sources from Spotify, the music industry, and artists themselves.

It's a big project and Pelly does it well, if a little densely at times. I couldn't help but compare it to the exceptional How Music Got Free -- in many ways, this is a direct sequel to that book, picking up almost exactly where Stephen Witt leaves off. What makes Witt's book so excellent, though, is his ability to weave a story and bring the characters to life while still jamming the narrative full of important information and commentary. Pelly doesn't quite pull off that fifth star, but the information is well-expressed and extremely important, so...who cares, read this.

I don't think it's a spoiler for anyone who spends any amount of time thinking about music that Pelly's overall point ends up being: Spotify is a symptom of our hypercapitalist world, and to change the music industry requires changing our world. She offers hope at the end, in the guise of organizations working towards better conditions for artists and workers at large, but it's all pretty depressing in the context of a current US presidency so favourable towards the interests of big tech (AMONG OTHER THINGS).

But, Pelly reminds us, and it's worth repeating: "Music is too important to be left solely to the marketplace." It is. And it, and other art forms, always will be.

Because, amidst the glut of takes on AI and how it's coming for all of us, I just keep coming back to the fact that humans want story. We want art. We might not always be able to tell the difference between what's entirely human generated and what isn't, but the lines there have been blurry for a long time. Our pop stars and biggest authors all follow a formula -- is it so different? Some might say yes, and that opinion has merit.

But -- there has always been a tension between those who make money off of their creations, formulaic or not, and those who don't. And I'm NOT in any way saying any of what Spotify or the industry at large does is acceptable -- it's not, and we need to push for better legal and financial protections for our artists and musicians.

But, despite how bleak everything seems right now, I guess I remain ever the optimist, because several dozen people are clapping across the street right now, and I can hear another concert happening a few streets over, and everyone is curious, everyone is present, no one is on their phones, even (shocking!) -- they're all watching, talking to each other, and moving to the rhythms and melodies.

Music is fundamental to our species. Algorithms aside, I believe the majority of us will always want to protect it. Mood Machine tells us not only why that's important, but why our engagement with streaming services is reshaping how we listen to it. And while I don't think the core of our desire for real, live, community-creating music will ever go away -- there's a better path forward than the one we're heading towards. Read this book and let's push for it."