Join us for an unmissable event with author Liz Pelly. Based on her work for her book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, Pelly will break down the downsides of leaving music to the marketplace, the consequences of how that changes audience behaviour and what the future of artist income should look like into the future.

Hosted by West Australian Music (WAM), the event offers a rare chance to hear from one of the world’s leading voices on the new music economy. Whether you’re a musician, industry professional, or just passionate about the future of music, this conversation is essential viewing!

Liz Pelly is a writer and editor based in New York. She is the author of  (One Signal Publishers). Her byline has appeared at The Baffler, Guardian, Harper's, NPR, Pioneer Works Broadcast, and many other outlets. She is an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch.

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.

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.