From Sweden With Hidden Costs
Liz Pelly's deep reporting on how Spotify molds listening tastes, house algotorials, and stream-bait pop
When you watch the Netflix Playlist series you get a standard-if-sturdy startup story with legal hurdles and tech geeks coding outside the lines. The labels carry all that golden booty, and they will make Daniel Ek pay. Ek accomodates the gatekeepers and takes over the world; it’s almost weird he didn’t attend last month’s inauguration. Author Liz Pelly agreed that the series works like a genre piece instead of muckrack reporting:
Liz Pelly: I thought that, you know, The Playlist, I watched it also when it came out on Netflix. And I also have read the book that it's based on. So the playlist is based on a book called The Spotify Play that came out in Sweden I think the subtitle is “How Spotify Beat Apple, Amazon and Google in the Race for Audio Dominance.” So it's a little bit of like an underdog narrative. But the reporting in it is really good. And I actually find it to be like, a really, really good resource and I appreciate the, you know, in my book, before the acknowledgments, I shout out that book and say that it was really helpful to me in piecing together the early history of Spotify.
So, yeah, whether you agree with the overall perspective or not, I think that there's a lot of, important reporting in that book. And I would hope, you know, even if someone didn't agree with some of the arguments. Made in my book that they would at least appreciate some of the reporting and revelations that went into it, because it is a work of reported criticism.
“…[Spotify’s founder and CEO] Daniel Ek was actually the beneficiary of public funding for the arts in his public school system growing up in Sweden.”
You know, it has a perspective. It's not like straight forward business journalism, in terms of the New Yorker review, I'm a big fan of Hua Hsu’s writing, sensibility and perspective on music. So I was really honored that he took the time to read my book and spend so much time reflecting on it.
Liz Pelly: There are some general aspects of the, perspective that aren't the same perspective that I have on streaming. And it's funny, this is the second interview today where someone asked me,
Tim Riley: Oh yeah,
Liz Pelly: of the review.
Tim Riley: Well, I realized now that I asked you, it's a bit of a setup.
I don't, I certainly, but here, let me frame it a different way. So I'm seeing, and as a music critic, I get asked a lot, like there seemed to be two different, major viewpoints out there. One is streaming is really killing music. It's bad for artists. It's really, it's a peril. It's a poison. We need to resist it.
And it's just, it's joined all the other evil empires. And then there's Hua Hsu’s, more, he's sort of more soft peddling it and saying, you know, this is, this is just kind of, where we're at and we have to deal with it. And there's actually some upside to it. And, it's not pure evil. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of upside to this.
And my sense is not having finished your book, but that you're trying to really weave a very nuanced path between those two extremes and that you have your own, you know, very well reported take on it. Does that, does that sound like a fair character characterization?
Liz Pelly: Yeah, I mean, by the end of the book, there's definitely straightforward arguments that I make in favor of, certain regulatory interventions and just streaming, into different policy oversights that I think would be really meaningful for not just musicians, but for the public as well.
I do sort of share my perspective that I really do think that if people are concerned with supporting musicians, and contributing to, the ongoing continuation of music as an art form, that reassessing one's own relationship with both participating as an active listener and contributor to music culture, contributing to sustaining the culture that you want to see exist in the world, is really important.
And I don't necessarily think that streaming really has anything to do with that. So there's never a point in the book where I say, Everyone delete your accounts and switch to XYZ service because that's just so simplistic, and I think, I always am of the belief that collective problems require collective solutions and that I think it's too individualistic to suggest that like switching from one streaming service to another or this focus on consumer behavior is, necessarily like any sort of fix all.
So yeah, I take a multi-pronged approach to both laying out these ideas for how streaming might be reformed and then pointing in the direction of different alternative models that artists have been working on, whether it be cooperative alternatives to streaming, or different musician unions that have popped up in the past few years.
I talk about the importance of increased public funding for the arts, including for music because public funding for music is so insignificant in the United States.
Tim Riley: I love how you point out that Daniel Ek [sic] was actually the beneficiary of public funding for the arts in his public school system growing up in Sweden.
Liz Pelly: Yeah…
MORE
“Ghosts in the Machine,” by Liz Pelly, Harper’s, December 2024
“Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome?” Hua Hsu reviews Pelly’s book in the New Yorker
Ted Gioia’s “The Honest Broker” substack links on spotify coverage
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly (One Signal/Atria)
The Playlist, based on the book by Sven Carlsson (Netflix, 2022)
The Spotify Play: How Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance, by Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud (Diversion Books, 2021)
PAUL KRUGMAN’s public grievance with his New York Times editorial page implicates both the brass and his colleagues. Editors: if you sense your Nobel Laureate has gripes, you buy him lunch and hear him out. If anything, his flameout tells you how little the enterprise cares about some of its smartest contributors. The silence from his peers tells you a lot… Swift handing Beyoncé her Grammy for Best Country Album felt good, but not good enough… Department of the OVEREXPOSED: Adam Driver… Catching up: Jason “Nepo” Reitman coaxes a series of underrated performances in his SNL biopic Saturday Night, a form that shouldn’t work and feels flukish when it succeeds: Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donaghue, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, and JT Walsh—I mean J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, carried along by a brisk, nonchalant lead from Gabrielle Labelle as Lorne Michaels, who has now starred for Spielberg (as the young filmmaker in The Fabelmans), and as a fetching lout in The Snack Shack.
noises off
LAST CALL for IG links, we have all but bailed: all Reels and highlights save across these categories: Tools, Journalism, Rock, Beatles, Dance, Posters, and Misc
Raid the archives for Year in Review issues parts 1 and 2, soulsters sing the Beatles, The Very Great Garth Hudson (especially here, but you know that), and appending Rob Sheffield’s Solo Beatles List.
riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link
Oh my, all the great links! Thanks Tim.