![]() The challenge was part technical, part contractual. The duo set out to build an ad-based music site with the ease of iTunes, the speed of Google, the sharing of Facebook and the massive music library of Napster-but legal. In 2006, he teamed up with Tradedoubler’s cofounder, Martin Lorentzon-Spotify’s cofounder and director, who’s worth $5.8 billion thanks to having bankrolled much of the streamer’s early days. He retreated to a remote cabin to focus on fixing digital music. Just 22, Ek bought a Ferrari and bottle service in flashy clubs before the rock-star life ultimately left him depressed. In high school he made websites for local businesses, then dropped out of college during his first year to build a digital ad company he later sold to online marketer Tradedoubler for more than $1 million. Raised in Stockholm’s rough Ragsved neighborhood, he had a natural talent for music and coding. Streaming accounts for $13.4 billion of that, 62% of the take.Įnter Ek. Fast-forward to 2020, when the music industry turned in its best performance in 18 years, with revenue jumping 54% to $21.6 billion. Physical album sales and downloads totaled $14.4 billion that year. In 2011, recorded music revenue was near $15 billion, 40% less than the $24 billion in sales it logged ten years before.įULL STREAM AHEAD When Spotify first landed in America in 2011, music streaming was just a $600 million global business. Late to transition to digital music and bled dry by piracy and file-sharing sites like Napster, the recording business had fallen hard from the glory days of the late 1990s, when compact discs reigned supreme. When the Swedish-born Spotify burst onto the American scene in 2011, the music industry was a mess. “The opportunity to evolve audio creation and interactivity for millions of people is significant.” Audio should do the same,” says Mary Meeker, the founder of venture firm Bond and longtime author of the influential Internet Trends report. “Having easy-to-use cameras in our hands has taken video 108 production from esoteric to the mainstream. What TikTok, YouTube and Instagram have done for photos and video, Ek wants to do for sound. All of which will be run through Spotify’s AI-powered algorithms to deliver an audio stream personalized to each listener. He wants to provide the tools to empower audio creators to dream up entirely new categories with fresh soundscapes. He’s shaping Spotify into the go-to destination for all digital sound: not just music but news, storytelling, live talk, audiobooks and education. “That’s a massive amount of revenue that needs to shift online.” alone, two thirds of all audio ad spending still goes to terrestrial radio,” Ek says. Each day the old-school medium reaches an estimated 3 billion people, and each year it pulls in ad revenue topping $30 billion, according to advertising research firm WARC. Radio, a 135-year-old technology, has proven more resilient than Keith Richards. Much of the audio world remains fragmented and shockingly analog. It should be a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry,” Ek says. ![]() Let other media behemoths battle for eyeballs Spotify is going after the world’s eardrums. “I had no idea Spotify’s cultural and monetary impact would ever be this big.” Last year, Spotify paid out $5 billion to rights holders, mostly the big labels, which passed along an estimated $500 million of that to recording artists. In 2020, streaming services delivered $13.4 billion in sales, representing 62% of industry revenue. ![]() in 2011, streaming was a $600 million business, accounting for 4% of the recording industry’s annual global revenue. ![]() “It’s no exaggeration to say that Daniel saved the music industry.” “Spotify was the force that transitioned hundreds of millions of users from piracy to paying customers,” says Sean Parker, who, as cofounder of Napster, was considered the Blackbeard of the music business before becoming Facebook’s first president and a Spotify investor. Spotify went public in 2018, and Ek-who in 2012 had a paper fortune of $300 million-is now worth $4.4 billion. Today, Ek’s superstreamer plays in 184 countries, has 7,400 employees and $9.7 billion in annual sales. The service had been available in America for only six months. Back then, in January 2012, Spotify had just 500 employees, $300 million in sales and a valuation of $2 billion. The company has come a long way since Ek reluctantly threw on a suit and tie-and threw back a few whiskies-to pose for the cover of the first Forbes 30 Under 30 issue ten years ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |