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

by Liz Pelly

In 2023, Spotify made it onto a year-end top 10 list of its own: as of December 31, it was listed as one of the ten biggest spenders on lobbying fees in the “internet companies” category on the nonprofit-run database OpenSecrets.org. According to the website, which tracks money in politics, Spotify ranked ninth on the list, spending over $1.58 million. It paled in comparison to ByteDance’s $8.74 million, Amazon’s $19.2 million, and Meta’s $19.3 million, but still, it was telling. Big technology companies have long aspired to buy political influence in order to normalize certain practices—around data collection, privacy, competition, tax evasion—and Spotify was among them.7 From 2015 to 2023, Spotify spent a total of $8,720,000 on lobbyists. Much of Spotify’s political activity has focused on its battle against Apple, who, when Apple Music launched in 2015, had already been spending big in DC: the company had spent $4 million on lobbying in 2014. The following year, Spotify began catching up, hiring its first four lobbying firms: Peck Madigan Jones, along with Forbes-Tate, Gibson Group, and BakerHostetler. These firms represented a huge cross section of corporate interests, across finance, pharmaceuticals, airlines, oil, and beyond, including the likes of Facebook, eBay, and Pandora. At the time, Politico called it “an aggressive move” for Spotify, noting that the company was likely motivated, in part, by the Justice Department’s then-looming considerations of changes to mu...