James Proctor’s Reviews > Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist > Status Update
James Proctor
is on page 75 of 285
Pesky protests for higher royalties aren't an issue when your playlists are filled with artists who don't exist. The relentless promotion of anonymous producers seems part of a larger effort to disconnect listeners from the makers of the music they're consuming, laying groundwork for users to accept the hypernormalization of music made using generative AI software.
— Dec 11, 2025 07:44AM
Like flag
James ’s Previous Updates
James Proctor
is on page 183 of 285
It appears now that the already-richest forces within music are set on exploiting DIY artists in new ways, whether through artificially deflating the value of their streams or outright buying the aggregators they rely on; on consolidating solo direct-uploading musicians' catalogs, converting them en masse into a type of asset class for the rich to trade in.
— Dec 12, 2025 07:37PM
James Proctor
is on page 116 of 285
When the recommendation systems are optimizing for extended listening sessions, when music that sounds like other music is what's most data-blessed, the reality of what we're hearing on playlists and AI DJ streams isn't music culture, it's Spotify culture. It's a weird data-refracted version of music culture. It's a top-down version of culture branding itself as a bottom-up version of culture.
— Dec 11, 2025 06:19PM
James Proctor
is on page 54 of 285
"Losing the physical object of the record, and instead leaning on monetization based on plays, really upends the transaction of music between songwriter and listener. It is a very politically astute maneuver that favors a narcotic relationship to music over a complex, meditative relationship to music."
— Dec 11, 2025 06:02AM
James Proctor
is on page 38 of 285
"I honestly think that the core of Spotify's success was recognizing that they're not selling music. They're not providing music. They're filling people's time. And the founder said at a company meeting, I remember he was like, 'Apple Music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors. Our only competitor is silence."
— Dec 10, 2025 08:55PM
