(Art) Worlds We Want: Book Reading "Mood Machine" With Liz Pelly

How do we build the (art) worlds we want? Join Liz Pelly, the author of "Mood Machine" and Nati Linares of Art.coop for a reading and convo!

Art.coop, in conjunction with Prime Produce Apprenticeship Cooperative, New Economy Coalition, United for Musicians and Allied Workers and the Network of NYC Worker Cooperatives, are proud to present journalist Liz Pelly discussing her book Mood Machine, an unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

Pelly will be joined by organizer Nati Linares of Art.coop for a community conversation focused on possible solutions to exploitation in the music industry and arts & culture at large via the lens of the solidarity economy movement.

This particular event will center on a powerful truth: artists have always resisted exploitation and forged new ways of creating and living. We welcome anyone working toward economic justice and solidarity economy—whether in the arts or beyond—as well as those just beginning to envision and build solutions. Together, we'll explore how to build not only the art worlds we want, but the worlds we need.

Drawing on over a hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.

For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music. Join us!