Mood Machine Book Launch

The Baffler and Greenlight Books are pleased to present a reading and discussion to celebrate the release of Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.

Mood Machine is an unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, as well as the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business. Lifting the veil on a notoriously opaque industry, Pelly describes the costs to both listeners and musicians as music under Spotify has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.  Surveying the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Mood Machine also chronicles the artist-led fight for better models.

To celebrate the book’s release, Pelly will read from the book before a discussion with composer, educator, and writer Max Alper (fka La Meme Young), followed by a signing.

Copies of the Mood Machine and issues of The Baffler will be available for purchase. The United Musicians and Allied Workers will also be tabling.

Max Alper is the director of product at Circular Ruin Studios and a composer, music technologist, educator, and writer based in New York. Formerly as “La Meme Young,” now as “Peretsky,” you can find him commenting on experimental music and audio culture through the art of shitposting.

Liz Pelly is a music journalist and contributing editor at The Baffler. She lives in New York.