I have been reading the new Liz Pelly book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.  It is a very intelligent and well done book, though it is more pessimistic than I am about the future of music.

One central lesson of the book is just how many “passive” music listeners there are.  In an earlier era they might have been content with muzak, even on the car radio (my father used to do that).  But with Spotify, and many other related internet music services, the passive listeners can be very readily identified.  They do not mind being fed AI-produced slop, or payola-driven songs in their feeds.  For instance, some song producers, often serving up musical slop, will accept lower royalty rates in return for algorithmic promotion.  The passive listeners accept this arrangement without complaint — maybe they just want background mood, or maybe

Keep reading this article on Marginal Revolution.