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Mood Machine
The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist
By Liz Pelly
Published by Hachette Australia
ISBN
9781399718851
When I first saw this book, I was intrigued. Although I am a qualified musician, I spent almost three decades as a disc jockey, most of that time, running my own mobile service. I have a deep knowledge of, and a passionate lover of, popular music. But I have never had an inclination to use, or even consider using, Spotify.
The author, Liz Pelly, is a music journalist, based in her home town of New York City and certainly doesn't pulls any punches.
Pelly sets the ball rolling by explaining what was happening at the turn of the millennium. An international website called 'Napster' was selling downloads of music they had copied. This was eventually halted in 2001 when they were hit by a US$60 million dollar lawsuit for copyright infringement which forced them into bankruptcy.
However, Pelly goes on to explain that the business model was embraced by the 'torrent' file-sharing community, where files, including music files, were shared, person to person. The major record labels, or majors as they are referred to, tried unsuccessfully to curb this trend by setting up two streaming services. Two of the majors set up one service, while the other four set up another. At about this time, in 2003, Apple iTunes was created, which gave 70% of all proceeds to the majors.
In this revealing book, Kelly informs the reader that in Sweden, where the 'piracy mindset' was still rife, the majors commented that Sweden was a lost market. Sweden frequently features in the early part of this narrative. A pirate streaming service, Pirate Bay, was still successfully operating in Sweden in the mid-twenty hundreds, but, as the name suggested, 98% of the music was pirated.
In 2005, two wealthy tech advertising executives, Daniel Ek and Martin Laurentzon joined forces. Daniel had become a tech multimillionaire in advertising at the age of 22. Martin, aged 36 who also forged his lucrative career in advertising, in tech and affiliate marketing.
Pelly reveals that Ek and Laurentzon were looking for a way to sell online advertising and were looking at business models which encompassed streaming, peer-to-peer technology and online advertising. They were looking for a medium that would attract people to their free platform to host advertising. At first they considred video streaming and had started along that route, but by no means were they interested in music.
We then read that Ek and Laureltzon decided that music might be a better option. The mp3 files were smaller than mp4 files for video, which meant they could stream more for the same cost and benefit from more advertising income.They decided to change to streaming music and coined the phrase "Everyone Loves Music".
Kelly writes that Ek wanted 'instant' music, compared to Pirate Bay so that when the user clicked the play button the music started’ immediately. Soon afterwards the majors sued Pirate Bay for copyright infringements and closed it down. Later, Ek contacted the majors and suggested there might be a way for them to re-enter the Swedish market.
This is where the book starts getting particularly juicy and where I started getting very angry about what Ek was doing to music and musicians.
One of the slogans they use is 'all the music in the world'. A friend mentioned this to me recently, so we went through his account to find a few obscure UK top-forty hits that I remembered and several did not appear in his Spotify search results.
Pelly writes a very compelling story, a real page turner, although I have to caution readers that she uses some music business jargon. Also, Pelly is American and writes in American English. However, I persevered because of the narrative and that it is extremely interesting.
This is an ideal book for anyone who loves music and also Spotify users. Not that Spotify users are not music lovers but they might want to know the background story.
It was certainly an eye-opener for me.
Reviewed by Ken.
The Author
Liz Pelly is a journalist living in New York. Her essays and reporting have appeared in the Baffler, where she is a contributing editor, as well as in the Guardian, NPR, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and many other outlets. She frequently speaks about music streaming on radio shows and podcasts, including appearances on The New York Times' Popcast, NPR's Morning Edition, and others. Pelly teaches in the recorded music program at New York University and has spent over a decade involved in all-ages show booking.
This is an independent review, I am not paid by the book publishers, so.If you Liked this review - please Buy me a coffee
