In Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, a new book from the journalist Liz Pelly, the playlist is the locus for many of Spotify’s troubling practices.

In “Mood Machine,” Liz Pelly details the many ways in which Spotify, the world’s leading music-streaming service, has in less ...

At its heart, Mood Machine chronicles a music world Pelly deems “broken.” She assigns most of the blame to Spotify and the major labels.

“Mood Machine” probes the mysteries of the Spotify playlist. In this excerpt from her book, Liz Pelly explores the rise of “ghost artists,” a side effect of Spotify’s endless stream.

In her book “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” author Liz Pelly discusses what Spotify has done to the music industry. Pelly visited the University of ...

Along the way, as journalist Liz Pelly shows in Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, the company has recast its product in several guises: quasi-legal ...

Hua Hsu reviews “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist,” by Liz Pelly.

The cover of "Mood Machine" by Liz Pelly. Simon & Schuster. Whereas Spotify’s founders once envisioned themselves as “the Google of music,” the company’s engineers are now devoted, ...

Mood Machine isn’t the final word on how this all happened, but the level of detail Pelly was able to get from current and former Spotify employees does explain a lot about how we got here. As ...

For a large chunk of the 2010s, Pelly was part of the independent-music community she writes about in Mood Machine while living and working at the Brooklyn arts space and venue Silent Barn. Anyone ...

‘Mood Machine’ Review: Against the Stream. Spotify’s perfect playlists come at a hidden cost—for the fans, for the music scenes that form around bands and, especially, ...