Algorithm and blues

The enraging truth behind streaming service Spotify's success and the damage its rise has inflicted on music and musicians

- By Alexis Petridis

In November and December last year, Spotify's chief executive, Daniel Ek, sold 420,000 shares in the music streaming company, earning himself $199.7m. One wild rumour that circulated on social media suggested Ek's eagerness to divest himself of stock in the company he founded was linked to the imminent publication of Liz Pelly's book Mood Machine, as if Ek feared the revelations contained within it would adversely affect the share price.

That was obviously a fanciful notion. Ek started cashing out Spotify shares in July 2023, and has continued doing so into 2025. At the time of his last transaction, a month after Pelly's book was published in the US, Spotify's share price was at an all-time high.

And yet, you can see how people who had a preview of Mood Machine's contents might get that idea into their head. It may be the most depressing and enraging book about music published this year, a thoroughly convincing argument that Spotify's success has had a disastrous effect on pop music. Pelly also alleges a catalogue of alarming corporate behaviour, indicative of a company that, one former employee suggests, has "completely lost its moral centre".