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What Spotify took from us by giving us everything

Liz Pelly’s new book examines how playlists reshaped our culture.

Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine, a dive into the history and workings of Spotify, is a useful guide to the way the streaming platform has altered the business of being an artist, but it’s one that avoids the conflicts between being a consumer and a patron of the arts. While having a huge catalog of recorded music at my fingertips is wonderful for me as a consumer, it also means that niche artists such as Oneida are functionally competing for my attention not just with Beyoncé, but with Elvis and the Beatles. But I have a hard time making a full-throated case for any record label, partly because it’s not clear to me in this day and age they offer many advantages over DIY releases, especially when artists are expected to market themselves.

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