Daniel Ek is the founder of Spotify, the music streaming service that revolutionized the music industry and how we listen to music. Ek was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1983. When he was just 13 years old, he began his own business where he created websites for businesses in his school computer lab. He recruited fellow students to help him. By the time he was eighteen years old, he was making $50,000 per month and managing a team of 25 people. Ever since Ek has continued to be innovative in creating content. After he sold his online advertising company, he partnered with Martin Lorentzon to create Spotify.
Ek wanted to make a music listening service that allowed users to listen to music for free, without having to pay for downloads. At the time, the biggest contenders in the music industry were downloadable music platforms like iTunes. However, behind the scenes, the problem of piracy in the music was a big one, and it was one Ek believed that his platform could tackle. Since most options for downloading music were expensive, users had to pay per-song or album to download, so, people flocked to illegal music downloading sites so they could own songs for free. Rather than regarding this as a problem for the law to deal with, Ek realized the problem was because of a larger problem in the music industry. If he could create a music listening service that was better than pirated music, people wouldn’t want to download music illegally.
With Spotify, listeners could stream music for free, with occasional advertisements. If listeners preferred to listen to music without ads, they could pay for the premium service, which ranges from $5 to $15 dollars a month depending on the plan.
Investors, however, did not see it as likely that Spotify could succeed in the music industry. Some thought a streaming service wouldn’t generate as much revenue as downloadable music platforms, such as iTunes, where users have to pay per download. Ek launched Spotify in 2008, and the program now has more than 70 million premium subscribers worldwide and has a market value of $26.5 billion. Spotify has had so much of an impact, that it pushed Apple to branch off of iTunes and launch their own streaming service, Apple Music. Spotify has changed the way people listen to music and Ek’s company is proof that entrepreneurs really can change the way people see an industry.
