This year, 2022, Daniel Ek, with an overall net worth of 1.9 billion, made the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his successful music app Spotify. The app taps into the music listening monopoly cornered by Apple and other phone companies and allows listeners to develop their own music taste with a wide variety of music and podcast choice and does not discriminate on device choice unlike some music apps. Spotify is available on all types of laptops and phones and even smart TVs and is arguably the most accessible music player app in the business.
Daniel Ek comes from Stockholm, Sweden, and started making websites for clients at just 13 years old. He expanded his website business among his classmates and by 18 was managing 25 people working for him and bringing in around $50,000 a year. After bouncing around various computer industry startups, Ek came up with the idea of Spotify seeing the fall of Napster. Napster was horribly wrecked with legal lawsuits from musicians since they did not get consent to use the music in peer-to-peer sharing. Ek realized “The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry.”.
I am surprised that he was only 13 years old when he started doing business like this. I also like that you added that he created Spotify after the fall of Napster. He had an example from a failed company to see how he could make a better music streaming service.