Every 4th Wednesday of the month, 6 - 7pm (EDT)

August 27, 2025: Downstream w/ Firuza (ft. Liz Pelly and Austin Robey)

Tune in to the first episode of Downstream, where your host Firuza chats with cool people building co-operative models in the music industry. Today's guests: Liz Pelly and Austin Robey. Liz Pelly is the author of Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, a critical investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, The Baffler, Harper’s, NPR, and more. Outside of writing, Pelly spent several years involved as a collective member at the long-running community arts space Silent Barn. Austin Robey is the founder of Subvert, a cooperatively-owned online marketplace for musicians. He is an advocate for collective ownership, solidarity economics, and new models for online creative economies. Previously, Austin was a co-founder of Ampled, a cooperatively-owned platform for musicians, and Metalabel, a release platform for creative work. Keep up with the project at downstream.neocities.org.

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