How Spotify is Built On Artist Exploitation w/ Liz Pelly

Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how the Spotify model of streaming music continues a long trend of exploitation in the music industry and why musicians need to organize around a vision for a different world of music.

Liz Pelly is a freelance writer and critic who has spent the past decade working with community arts spaces. She is also a contributing editor and columnist at The Baffler. Follow Liz on Twitter as @lizpelly.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Read the plan for the future of the show and supporter benefits on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Liz’s work looks at many aspects of Spotify, including the model it’s pushing on musicians and increasingly on podcasters
• Paris has written about how consolidation and the emergence of streaming is having similarly negative effects in film and television
• Naomi Klein explains how New Deal arts programs funded 225,000 musical performances which reached 150 million Americans — and much more
• Cherie Hu tweeted a diagram showing how different streaming and music companies have stakes in one another
• The Verge obtained Sony Music’s contract with Spotify
• How Galaxy 500 and Pavement had random songs take off on Spotify
• Spotify CEO says artists need to record music more frequently
• Henderson Cole’s proposal for an American Music Library
• The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers launched the Justice at Spotify campaign