Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect PlaylistBook
by Liz Pelly
Who uses, recommends or left Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
Musician and data analyst; writes Can't Get Much Higher, working through the history of popular music from the charts and the recordings.
mixed
Liz Pelly’s account of how Spotify does things to hurt artists is well-researched and compelling. The second half of the book where she proposes solutions to these digital problems left me wanting more, though.
Year-end list of every book he read in 2025, with a short verdict on each
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.