Spotify

Daniel EkDaniel EkDaniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur and a co-founder of Spotify, and has served as Spotify’s executive chairman since January 2026. He also co-founded Neko Health with Hjalmar Nilsonne and helped found the investment firm Prima Materia.Open the full entry grew up in Stockholm and was already earning money designing and hosting websites while still at school. After dropping out of an engineering course at the Royal Institute of Technology, he worked as a programmer at the internet marketing company Tradedoubler and got to know Tradedoubler’s founder, Martin Lorentzon. In 2005 the two decided to work together on a new project. The company name came out of a last-minute brainstorming session: Lorentzon misheard one of Ek’s suggestions and registered the domain name Spotify, which was only later explained as a combination of “spot” and “identify.”⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][2]

In 2006 Ek and Lorentzon formally founded Spotify, with the idea of building a legal platform for distributing music online as an alternative to the illegal file-sharing sites that dominated at the time. Before founding Spotify, Ek had founded the online advertising company Advertigo (later acquired by Tradedoubler) and served as chief technology officer of Stardoll.⁠[3][3][2][2]

The listed entity, Spotify Technology S.A., was incorporated in Luxembourg on December 27, 2006, initially as a private limited liability company (société à responsabilité limitée), and was converted into a public limited liability company (société anonyme) on March 20, 2009. Its registered office is at 33 Boulevard Prince Henri in Luxembourg, its principal operational office is at Regeringsgatan 19 in Stockholm, and its agent for U.S. federal securities law purposes is Spotify USA Inc. in New York.⁠[2][2][2]

Ek first sought global licenses from record labels; after repeated rejections he narrowed the focus to Europe, followed by two years without income. In October 2008 Spotify launched on an invitation-only basis in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain. Ek said the music industry was in dire shape at the time and that he had lobbied label executives at their offices week after week. As of 2013, Universal Music, together with other major labels and the independent-label consortium Merlin, held about 20% of Spotify’s equity.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

When Spotify launched its service in 2008, global recorded-music revenue had fallen from $23.8 billion in 1999 to $16.9 billion in 2008, as piracy and digital distribution disrupted the industry.⁠[4]

In 2009 Spotify introduced a mobile service with an offline feature, which became the turning point in getting users to pay. Product chief Gustav Söderström said many people thought it was foolish to start charging when every other service was free, and that the company had not been as sure about it as it later claimed.⁠[1][1]

On July 14, 2011, Spotify officially launched in the United States, competing with the music services of Apple, Amazon, and Google. It had been discussing a U.S. launch for more than a year, and negotiations with the major record labels repeatedly delayed it; at the time of the U.S. launch it had more than 10 million registered users in seven European countries, 1.6 million of them paying.⁠[5][5][5]

In September 2011, during its partnership with Facebook, Spotify put sharing ahead of privacy: existing users’ listening suddenly became public, and new users could only sign up with a Facebook account. After a strong backlash, both requirements were dropped.⁠[1][1]

At its fifth anniversary in October 2013, Spotify offered more than 20 million songs to 24 million users in 32 territories and had more than 1,000 employees. In 2012 it had revenue of €434.7 million and a net loss of €58.7 million.⁠[1][1][1]

Spotify said about 70% of its subscription income went into an industry pool from which individual rights holders paid their artists; by February 2013 it had paid a cumulative $500 million to rights holders. Musicians including Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich publicly criticized the model as paying new artists too little, while Söderström responded that the concern was understandable and that the company tried to provide data as transparently as possible.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

In 2014 Taylor Swift ended her contract with Spotify over pay and returned only three years later. Ek said at the time that Spotify had paid more than $2 billion to rights holders since 2008.⁠[3][3]

In July 2015 Spotify launched Discover Weekly, a personalized playlist of “new discoveries and deep cuts” for each of its then 75 million users, based on their own listening and that of similar users and updated automatically every Monday. Product manager Matthew Ogle said the aim was for it to feel like a best friend making you a mixtape every week.⁠[6][6][6]

By early 2018, Spotify programmed about 31% of all listening on the platform through playlists such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, and Release Radar, up from less than 20% two years earlier.⁠[4]

In December 2017 Spotify and Tencent Holdings completed two separate equity investments: Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) issued shares to Spotify, Spotify issued shares to a Tencent affiliate, and Tencent also bought Spotify shares in a secondary purchase. After the transactions, Spotify held a minority stake in TME, and Tencent and TME indirectly held minority stakes in Spotify.⁠[4][4][4][4]

On February 28, 2018, Spotify filed an F-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange: rather than issuing new shares, existing shareholders would take their shares directly to the market, allowing early investors and employees to sell their stakes, without the aim of raising new funds. Private transaction prices implied a valuation range of $6.3 billion to more than $23 billion.⁠[7][7][7][7]

At the time of filing, Spotify had 159 million monthly active users, including 71 million paid subscribers; its 2017 revenue rose almost 40% to €4 billion, but it had made a loss every year, losing more than €1.2 billion in 2017. Through the end of 2017, it had paid more than €8 billion in royalties to artists, record labels, and publishers.⁠[7][7][4]

On April 3, 2018, Spotify Technology S.A. completed the direct listing of its ordinary shares on the New York Stock Exchange.⁠[8]

On February 14, 2019, Spotify acquired Anchor FM, a software company for creating and distributing podcasts, for total consideration of €136 million; the next day it acquired the independent podcast producer Gimlet Media for €172 million; and on April 1 it acquired the storytelling podcast studio Parcast (Cutler Media) for €49 million. Since 2019, Spotify has expanded its podcast offering and invested heavily in content.⁠[9][9][9][2]

In March 2019 Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission, alleging unlawful and anticompetitive conduct. The Commission opened a formal investigation in June 2020 and in March 2024 found Apple’s conduct illegal under EU antitrust rules, fining it €1.84 billion; Apple has appealed, and Spotify has intervened in the appeal in support of upholding the decision.⁠[2][2][2]

On March 6, 2020, Spotify acquired the sports and pop culture content company The Ringer (Bill Simmons Media Group) for €170 million, and on December 8 it acquired the podcast technology company Megaphone for €195 million to expand podcast monetization. At the end of 2020, Spotify was present in 93 countries and territories, with 345 million monthly active users and 155 million paid subscribers.⁠[9][9][9]

The podcast The Joe Rogan Experience debuted on Spotify in September 2020 and became exclusive to the platform that December; the exclusive deal Rogan signed that year was worth $100 million.⁠[9][10]

Spotify monetizes through subscriptions and advertising and reports two segments, Premium and Ad-Supported. At the end of 2025, users could listen to more than 100 million music tracks and 7 million podcast titles; in select markets, eligible Premium subscribers get a set number of hours each month in a subscriber catalog of 500,000 audiobooks. Spotify says it has moved users from a “transaction-based” model of buying and owning music to an “access-based” model of on-demand streaming.⁠[9][2][2][2]

In addition to ordinary shares, Spotify issues beneficiary certificates that carry no economic rights and one vote each. As of December 31, 2025, Daniel Ek held 13.9% of the ordinary shares and 38.7% of the beneficiary certificates, for 28.8% of total voting power; Martin Lorentzon held 9.3% of the ordinary shares and 61.3% of the beneficiary certificates, for 40.5%; together the two controlled about 69.3% of the vote. Tencent held 8.1% of the ordinary shares, and Ek also exercises the voting power of shares held by Tencent-related entities such as TME Hong Kong through an irrevocable proxy held by his D.G.E. Investments.⁠[2][2][2][2]

Spotify: Official website: https://www.spotify.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

X: Public account: https://x.com/spotify (opens in a new window)⁠[11]