Spotify’s biggest sin? Its algorithms have pushed artists to make joyless, toothless music | John Harris

New book, Mood Machine , by Liz Pelly , is about the music-streaming giant Spotify .

Pelly traces the birth of this “muted, mid-tempo and melancholy” sound to around 2018 .

Spotify in effect encourages musicians to produce this aural wallpaper, by showing them the data that proves this is how to make money from the platform.

The limited public outcry about the tiny rewards Spotify offers most musicians and songwriters may be connected to the fact that the average chill’ playlist is intended only as background music.

But what sets Spotify apart is something much more insidious: it goes beyond alterations of music’s forms into what we think music is there to do.

Technology always bends and re-shapes artistic creativity.