Spotify unwrapped w/ Liz Pelly

In 2006, the music streaming service Spotify, founded by Swedish
entrepreneurs Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon was launched in the
context of widespread music piracy, file sharing, and declining
profits for the music majors. Presenting themselves as music fans
who were intent on saving the music industry, Spotify has since
gone on to become the dominant music streaming platform, far
eclipsing any of its rivals, and making Ek and Lorentzon
billionaires. While once lauded by the media, Spotify's reputation
has significantly declined as understanding of how little most
musicians receive from streaming has become more widespread and as
Spotify has courted controversy by populating some of its playlists
with so-called "perfect fit content" - stock music produced for
Spotify in order to reduce the amount of royalties the company pays
to rights holders. Journalist Liz Pelly has done more than most to
bring to light practices such as these and to challenge the
myth-making of Spotify's founders. In today's episode we spoke
about the early years of Spotify, as it emerged in the context of
mass file sharing and as the major music labels were coming to see
Sweden as a lost market - making it ripe as a site for
experimentation with streaming. We went on to talk about how
Spotify is shaping the user habits of listeners and about the
damaging consequences of the datafication of music. Finally, we
chatted about some of the inspiring efforts to challenge the
dominance of Spotify that have emerged in recent years, as both
musicians and listeners seek to find ways to create music
communities and to preserve and curate music history - practices
that Spotify's dominance has severely eroded.