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

by Liz Pelly

On a collective level, we have to be active participants in the cultural economies we want to see flourish; we have to validate the culture we want to see in the world. The corporate culture industry entrenches its power not just through controlling the marketplace but also by controlling the popular imagination, by convincing us that there are no alternatives. The alternatives are growing all around us, though. To be sure, the broader equation for revaluing music also involves staying plugged into the organizing work, standing in solidarity with the new music labor movement groups, supporting the long political fights ahead. Streaming is not going away anytime soon, and some basic regulations are the bare minimum we can do to attempt clawing back the corporate stranglehold on culture, to try to get a bit more money into the pockets of working artists. Lawmakers should seriously consider new rules for digital payola. At the FTC, there should be more oversight of the major label licensing deals with all streaming services—not just Spotify. UMAW’s Living Wage for Musicians Act would create a new, additional royalty stream paid directly to artists. The American Music Fairness Act aims to get artists in the U.S. paid when their music is played on AM and FM radio. And perhaps most important of all, the Protect Working Musicians Act would give artists the right to unionize and collectively bargain, thus giving them more negotiating power with not just streaming services, but the...