'One of the best music books of the year' - Neil McCormick, Daily Telegraph
What if the song that would change your life is already out there - buried somewhere in 100 million tracks, one skipped click away?
In You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song, former Spotify "Data Alchemist" Glenn McDonald opens the black box of music streaming and shows how it is quietly transforming what we hear, how artists earn a living and what music means in a digital age. Drawing on years spent inside the algorithmic engine of Spotify, McDonald reveals how playlists, recommendation algorithms, listening data and streaming royalties really work - and what they're doing to artists, fans and culture itself.
Moving from the age of record shops and radio to Napster, iTunes, the iPod and the rise of Spotify, this book is a sharp, witty and surprisingly hopeful tour of the streaming era - from the economics of a fraction-of-a-cent stream to the strange new power of fan armies, bots and "chill" playlists that never end.
Inside this book you'll discover:
How music streaming services turned buying records into exploring infinite catalogues - and why that changes what we value and how we listenWhat Spotify algorithms actually do (and don't do), why they're less like evil robots and more like very simple math, and how they can still go badly wrongWhy royalty systems such as pro‑rata vs user‑centric payments matter for fairness, independence and the future of the music industryThe hidden world of playlist culture - editorial playlists, algorithmic playlists and the lists your friends make - and how they've become the new gatekeepersHow streaming exposes inequalities in genre, gender and geography - from Nashville country radio to global diasporas - and what more equitable, data‑driven music discovery could look likeThe new joys of a connected world: global micro‑genres, borrowed nostalgia, weird subcultures and the statistical certainty that you truly haven't yet heard your favourite song
Written in clear, elegant prose by someone who has handled the listening data of hundreds of millions of people, You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song is part music history, part technology explainer and part cultural manifesto. It will change how you think about Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, algorithmic recommendations, AI in music, streaming royalties and the future of recorded music.
Scroll up, click "Buy now" and start exploring why you have not yet heard your favourite song.
