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The Hello and welcome to another episode of Politics Theory Other.

My name is Alex Doherty and my guest today is Liz Pelly.

In 2006, the music streaming service Spotify, founded by

Swedish entrepreneurs Daniel Eck and Martin Lorenzon, was launched in the context of widespread

music piracy and file sharing and declining profits for the music majors. Presenting themselves

first and foremost as music fans who were intent on saving the music industry

and creating a seamless listener experience for users, Spotify has since gone on to become the

dominant music streaming platform, far eclipsing any of its rivals, and making Echin-Lorentz

on billionaires. While initially lauded by the music press and tech media, Spotify's reputation

has significantly declined, as understanding of how little most musicians receive from streaming

has become more widespread, and as Spotify has courted controversy by populating some of its

playlists with so-called perfect fit content. Stock music produced for Spotify in order to reduce the

amount of royalties, the company pays to rights holders. And by introducing Discovery Mode,

a program that increases the prominence of artists' tracks on Spotify playlists in return for a reduced

royalty rate, what many critics have described as a modern-day version of the Paola radio scandals.

My guest today, Liz Pelly, has done more than most to bring to light practices such as these,

and to challenge the myth-making that Spotify's founders have engaged in, in order to portray the

company as being on the side of musicians and music fans. We spoke about the early years of Spotify as it

emerged in the context of mass file sharing and as the major music labels were coming to see Sweden

as a lost market, making it ripe as a site for experimentation with streaming. We went on to talk about

how Spotify is shaping the user habits of listeners and about the damaging

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