Reviewing Mood Machine, Part 3

Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist is a thoroughly researched and thoughtfully presented history of the effects digital technologies have had on our ability to experience human-made arts and culture.

It’s a must-read for anyone who loves music, and highly recommended!

Instead of a traditional review of this book, I’m pulling notable quotes from each chapter and letting them speak for themselves.

You can buy Mood Machine here (not an affiliate link).

Chapter 3: Selling lean-back listening

This chapter details Spotify’s early experiments with playlisting, both human-curated and automated, and the effects playlisting has had on music consumers, music appreciation in general, and artists/labels.

“…the industry had identified a new type of target consumer: the lean-back listener, who was less concerned with seeking out artists and albums, and was happy to simply double click on a playlist…”

“Data is never neutral - it reflects the biases of the culture and business logics from which it is generated. And there was nothing inherently neutral about setting up a system that wrapped up all of a song’s worth in its replay value.”

“A huge number of listeners…just listen to playlists.” There’s a term thrown around called ‘passive listeners’. That’s pretty depressing."

“Not all artists have mass-scale success in mind when they write, record, and release music. Not everyone who wants a music career also wants to be a pop star.”

“Spotify obsessively talked about how it was leveling the playing field, but there were plenty of anecdotes suggesting otherwise. Certainly something was being leveled-flattened, smoothed, homogenized.”

You can buy Mood Machine here.