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

by Liz Pelly

When I perused the “Front Page Indie” playlist in the spring of 2024, about a quarter of the playlist was made of major label music, and roughly another quarter was credited to independent labels with major label distribution. As one might guess, Spotify’s primary concern is not the long and rich history of independent music, or with providing a platform exclusively for artists on independent record labels, but is rather more aligned with the long history of the music industry flattening “indie” into a specific sound, genre, or as Spotify calls it, a “vibe.” Indeed, its flagship “no genre, just vibes” playlists, “Lorem” and “POLLEN”—which were being touted around on a music press and spon-con tour where Spotify’s PR team branded them the “future” of its playlist curation strategy—occupy much of the visual real estate on the “Indie” page.