Liz Pelly's "Mood Machine" and Me

Is this a book report? Maybe! Is it going to make you feel good? I doubt it! Is it really long? You betcha!

Last weekend I finished reading the eye-opening book Mood Machine by American music writer Liz Pelly. To say I was excited to read this book is an understatement; I actually took the time to preorder it (which you should always do!) and cracked it as soon as we returned from the Sum 41 tour last month. While I was somewhat familiar with Liz Pelly’s music writing and Twitter X (The Everything App) feed, I was chomping at the bit to read her book because of her bona fides: on top of teaching at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pelly is also a journalist and contributing editor at The Baffler (one of my favourite print magazines) and has also written for The Guardian and NPR among other great media outlets. The Baffler is one of the places where Pelly began publishing excerpts of her years-long research into a company whose product might be on the device you’re currently using to read these words: Spotify.

The above hyperlinked excerpts are definitely worth reading before you read any more of what I have to say. Once you’ve read those, come back here and I’ll do my best to try and explain some of my main thoughts and takeaways. The primary takeaway, though, is this: Mood Machine is a dense and, frankly, frightening book that any music lover who uses streaming services should read. I’m still working through my feelings and processing the overwhelming amount of information contained in its pages, so this post will necessarily be open-ended and incomplete. I’d love to hear what people think about this stuff in the comments!