Spotify Is Even Worse Than You Think with Liz Pelly

Factually! with Adam Conover

Headgum

Comedy

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s no secret that Spotify pays artists extremely poorly, but it turns out they don’t treat their customers much better. Author and journalist Liz Pelly’s new book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, investigates how Spotify has accelerated the collapse of the music industry, along with their shady practices such as filling playlists with stock music—fooling customers into listening to artists who don’t actually exist. This week, Adam sits with Liz to talk about how a service that brands itself around “discovery” is actually flattening the music-listening experience of customers worldwide. Find Liz's book at factuallypod.com/books

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a headgum podcast.
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1:13.1	That's helloalma.com slash factually. I don't know the truth.
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	...

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