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

by Liz Pelly

Streams, for better or worse, add up equally. Users passively streaming music all day in the background meant just as much to Spotify as any other kind of listening, and it was easier to encourage. “We really want to soundtrack every moment of your life,” Daniel Ek said in 2016. “So what excites us [is] when we are able to do that in moments which may seem counterintuitive at first. Take sleep as an example. Millions of people every day (or night!) now go to sleep listening to Spotify. This is a behavior that is brand new for a huge chunk of that same audience. So as we think about Spotify in the future, it’s really all about bringing music (and other media) to more moments in your life. In order to do that, we need better recommendations, better partnerships, and the right content for those moments.”