Spotify Teardown

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This innovative investigation explores the inner workings of Spotify, tracing how audio files transform into a streamed experience. While Spotify has disrupted the music industry, such disruption comes with costs. The book contests the notion that digital culture thrives solely on disruption. Utilizing the concept of “teardown” from reverse-engineering, a team of five researchers disassembles Spotify's product and its common perceptions. Initially hailed as a solution to illegal downloading, Spotify's roots lie in the Swedish file-sharing community, and it now resembles a media company in need of regulation. This raises critical questions about how cultural content, including songs, books, and films, is made available online. The authors combine interviews, participant observations, and analyses of Spotify's "front end" with covert investigations of its "back end." Their research involved creating a record label for study, intercepting network traffic, and web-scraping corporate materials. Their innovative methods led to a stern letter from Spotify, accusing them of violating terms of use, and threats to their research funding. Consequently, the book serves as an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks governing corporate behavior.