The Rise of Spotify, with Liz Pelly

Mar 24, 2025

Join music journalist Liz Pelly, known for her incisive work in outlets like The Guardian and NPR, as she explores the rise of Spotify and its profound effects on the music industry. Discover how Spotify's freemium model and personalized playlists influence listener habits and artist experiences. Pelly reveals the hidden costs of streaming, including the challenges faced by independent musicians and the ethics of algorithm-driven recommendations. This engaging conversation delves into a new music landscape shaped by technology and offers a reevaluation of distribution models.

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ANECDOTE

Spotify's Origins

Spotify, created in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, initially considered various media forms like video and audiobooks.
The founders' focus was on advertising revenue, with music eventually becoming their "traffic source."

INSIGHT

Playlists: A Bridge Between Mixtapes and Radio

Spotify's curated playlists bridge the gap between personalized mixtapes and commercial radio programming.
This strategy blends user agency with algorithmic recommendations and human curation.

INSIGHT

Evolution of Spotify's Playlist Strategy

Spotify's playlist strategy evolved from a user-generated "Wild West" to a controlled, mood-based system.
This shift aimed to enhance user experience and optimize for "lean-back" listening.

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Music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed. But how did we get here, and what does it mean for artists, listeners, and the music industry as a whole?

In today’s episode, journalist Liz Pelly unpacks the origins of Spotify, its meteoric rise, and its transformative impact on the way we create and experience music. Whilst researching for her new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, Pelly conducted over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians.

Liz Pelly is a music journalist and author 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 and Pitchfork.

She’s joined by Timandra Harkness, writer, presenter and author of Technology is Not the Problem, for a conversation on the ethics of streaming, the economics of playlists, and the hidden costs of the “perfect” listening experience.

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