There’s a great book out right now called Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, by Liz Pelly. You may be thinking “I know the cost of my playlist, Spotify premium is $11.99 a month!”. You’d be right in that regard, but this book dives much deeper than that, starting from Spotify’s 2006 origins as a humble multi-million dollar venture capital backed advertising platform to the $150 billion streaming giant it is today. The cost of Spotify’s journey, for artists, for musicians, for workers, for independents, for listeners, has been steep, and a constant question is repeated throughout the tracing of the company's history: Who has benefited from the streaming revolution? The answer may surprise you, and this book provides the most comprehensive investigation into that question. So when we learned that the author, Liz Pelly, was teaming up with Art.coop, Prime Produce Apprenticeship Cooperative, New Economy Coalition, United for Musicians and Allied Workers and the Network of NYC Worker Cooperatives to host a reading and community discussion on Tuesday, we high tailed it down 424 W 54th st. to join.

The event oscillated between group discussions, readings by Liz, and Q&A segments. We were especially appreciative of the community discussion segments. Attendees gathered in groups to get to know each other and discuss related prompts such as: “How has Spotify influenced the ways you engage with art”. We met an economics professor interested in how Spotify warps supply and demand for music. We met a college radio DJ who wanted to build music discovery infrastructure that isn’t algorithm based. We met several artists that were banding together to create their own support networks built outside of corporate platforms. Shouts out to moderator/facilitator Nati Linares of Art.coop for their work on the organizational front.

Liz read some excerpts and shared perspective. Some people think the book is depressing, that it lays out the scale of issues to such a degree that all you can do is shrug and say “What can you do”, but it shouldn’t be taken that way. The grim facts revealed about Spotify's exploitation of artists and artistic labor prove that solidarity is power. She highlighted that the emergence of artists collectively organizing themselves as a labor movement is a positive development that is driving real impact. As proof, representatives for United for Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) were in attendance, sharing their mission and accomplishments.

For the uninitiated, UMAW, formed in 2020, “...aims to organize music workers to fight for a more just music industry and to join with other workers in the struggle for a better society.” With a growing nationwide membership, they operate to reclaim worker power in the music industry through collective action. As recently as May, they successfully petitioned the New York City council to pass Resolution 368. This in turn calls on the United States Congress to pass the Living Wage for Musicians Act. a bill crafted by UMAW and sponsored by Reps Rashida Talib & Jamaal Bowman that would primarily re-align streaming royalties to guarantee a portion of streaming revenue goes directly to artists instead of to platforms. If you’re interested in learning more about UMAW or getting involved, connect with them here.

All in all, it was a fantastic community event that left us feeling energized. As stated by the evenings moderator, “artists have always resisted exploitation and forged new ways of creating and living”. If you’d like a copy of Mood Machine by Liz Pelly, you can find it via Bookshop here. If you’d like to connect with UMAW or any other organizations listed, we’ll include their links below:

• UMAW
• Art.coop
• Prime Produce Apprenticeship Cooperative
• New Economy Coalition
• Network of NYC Worker Cooperatives

Rrrock On, Rrrat Pack, see you around.