Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist

by Liz Pelly

If you start looking at Spotify as an advertising company rather than a culture company, a lot of things make more sense.”

“It proved to them that they’re not a music company. They’re a time filler for boredom.”

There isn’t such thing as a lofi artist. There’s only such thing as a person who is a part of the lofi machine.”

capitalism both alienates us and sells us tools to distract us from the loneliness of nonstop alienated labor, sickens us and then sells us the cure.

Everyone had to commodify their personalities now by becoming a comedian, or making some other sort of clickbait emotional appeal. Artists needed to be dancers and models and lifestyle influencers; they needed to open up about their innermost struggles. An extreme sense of literalism in lyrics triumphed, with songwriters angling to position themselves as easily legible TikTok personalities, as relatable underdogs hustling for streams.

I never considered TikTok to cause the rise of deeply confessional songwriting, but it makes sense

As the artist quinn told Press-Reynolds for the 2022 No Bells piece,

This is crazy I never thought I'd see osquinn in a book