Daniel Ek, a serial entrepreneur and technologist who started his first company in 1997

at the age of 14, co-founded Spotify in 2006 together with Martin Lorentzon.
As the CEO of Spotify, Daniels role is to guide the vision and strategy of the company
as it grows. Leading the management team, Daniel is also responsible for nurturing a
passionate working environment for everyone at Spotify.
Prior to Spotify, Daniel founded Advertigo, the online advertising company acquired by
TradeDoubler, having previously held senior roles at Nordic auction company Tradera
(acquired by Ebay). Daniel was also CTO at Stardoll, the fashion & entertainment
community for tweens.
Daniel was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden, where he still lives, although he
spent some time living in London where he was able indulge his love for Arsenal. A
keen guitarist since he was given his first instrument at the tender age of four, Daniel
also enjoys spending his leisure time beating his colleagues at FIFA in the Spotify

A Brief History Of Spotify

Posted Jul 29, 2015 by Jordan Crook, Fitz Tepper

With over 75 million users, its hard to remember a time without Spotify. But there was. A
time when we were all mulling the aisles of Target for new CDs. A time in our lives
where we all became thieves on Napster. A time when iTunes forced us to buy songs for
$2/piece. And then came Spotify.
Spotify is a Swedish leading music, podcast, and video streaming service that provides digital rights
managementprotected[4]content from record labels and media companies.[5] It is available in most of
the Americas, Western Europe, and Oceania.[6] Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album,
genre, playlist, or record label.
Spotify was launched in September 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB. As of June 2016 Spotify
had more than 100 million active users and about half a billion registered users. The number of paid
subscribers reached 30 million in March 2016.[7] Spotify Ltd. operates as the parent company,
headquartered in London,[8] while Spotify AB handles research and development in Stockholm.[9]

As of December 2012, Spotify provided access to approximately 20 million songs. [10] The number of
songs has more than doubled since then. Users could search for artists, albums, titles, labels and
genres, and access tracks from many major and independent labels. Some artists opted out of
Spotify.[5][11] Additionally, some artists withdrew from specific regions because of licensing restrictions.
The Spotify desktop client allowed music to be imported from iTunes,[12] with the option of syncing
with a mobile device.[13] Users can create and share playlists,[14] or edit them together with other
users. While Spotify does not automatically create preference-based playlists, it does integrate with
Last.fm. Spotify includes a Radio feature for Spotify Free and Premium accounts. Radio creates a
random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades.
Websites, blogs, and 3rd-party applications and tools support Spotify.[15] Community resources
include Facebook and Last.fmgroups, Twitter bots and user forums, and tools to display lyrics and
services to list and notify users about new releases. [16] In 2010, Spotify's blog, The Pansentient
League, held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing
Site, Best News & Music Finder Site, and Best Playlist Generator.[17]
Spotify allows users to integrate their account with existing Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Thereafter they are able to access their friends'/follower's favourite music and playlists. [18]

Daniel Ek, (born February 21, 1983, Stockholm, Sweden) Swedish entrepreneur who in
2006 cofounded Spotify, the Internet music-streaming service that provides listeners
with legal, ad-supported access to millions of songs, rejecting traditional models of
downloading and eliminating per-song costs.
Ek grew up in Ragsved, near Stockholm, and, as a teenager, he created Web sites for
businesses and ran Web hosting services out of his bedroom. He dropped out of
college and worked for several Web-based companies before founding Advertigo, an
online marketing firm that he sold in 2006 to the Swedish company Tradedoubler. He
then established Spotify with Tradedoublers cofounder, Martin Lorentzon, and became
CEO. Eks innovative business model for providing access to music online differed from
other services in that it did not involve charging for song downloads. Spotify customers
could listen to online streaming music for free if they were willing to allow display or
audio advertising. For $5 or $10 a month in subscription fees, however, consumers
could avoid the advertisements.
From the outset, the music industry expressed little enthusiasm for Eks innovation,
because Spotifys license to stream music earned the industry far less revenue per song
than it got from a music download service such as Apple Inc.s iTunes. Ek retorted that

Spotify discouraged online music piracy by providing a low-cost alternative and that the
service would, over time, generate substantial royalties for the music industry. Despite
such reservations, Spotify launched in 2008 and quickly became popular with both
users and investors. By 2010 venture capital money was beginning to flow in to Spotify,
and some analysts estimated that the services potential value was as much as $4
billion. In 2012 Spotify had 18 million songs and more than 20 million monthly active
users, though not all were paying subscribers.

DANIEL EK,
SPOTIFY