Destinie Orndoff

Years ago, a struggling salesman named Chris Gardner locked himself and his toddler inside a public restroom at a train station. He pressed his foot against the door so no one could push in and cried as quietly as he could so his son wouldn’t wake up. That scene, recreated by Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happyness, is based on Gardner’s real life. He was broke and betting everything on a stockbroker training program with no guarantee of a job at the end.

For 13 years, Kristin Carver Smith’s job was to make sure other people got noticed. As a publicist and founder of The New Fashioned Co., she spent her days at a laptop, shaping messaging and pitching journalists on behalf of thought leaders and brands. The work was relentless and, for a long time, thrilling. “I’ve never had a boring day before,” she says. Then the days turned dangerous.

Spotify wants its listeners to do more than press play. For most of its history, Spotify’s job was to help people find music. Now the company wants to help people make it, reshape it and personalize it. Under a new agreement with Universal Music Group, Spotify plans to let fans create AI-generated covers and remixes from participating artists’ catalogs.