Since its publication a year ago, Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist has become the go-to resource for anyone who cares about the meaning and worth of music in the streaming era. It’s a damning critique of the industry’s biggest streaming player, Spotify, that lays out how the company’s crass practices have served to turn music—our most visceral art form—into a background concern while devaluing it in a very literal sense, too. Through deep reporting and an unwavering ethical framework, Pelly took Spotify to task. As the book became a national bestseller, the streamer’s continued misdeeds were put under a microscope throughout 2025, leading to a steady drumbeat of negative press and many artists leaving the platform in disgust.

But when we meet at a Brooklyn cafe to discuss Mood Machine and its impact, Pelly doesn’t seem interested in dunking on Spotify yet again. Instead, she’s most excited to show me the guest book that she asked readers to write in during her globetrotting Mood Machine tour. The black notebook is filled with signatures, stickers, and notes of appreciation and DIY communion, some of which run several paragraphs long.

More than anything, Pelly hopes her book continues to facilitate this kind of active conversation and interest in alternatives to the music industry’s current status quo. Because long after Spotify and its ilk are relegated to the tech scrapyard, Pelly will still have her principles. She’ll still be able to consult her guest book, and dream up new ways to further the camaraderie found within it.