The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance

by Sven Carlsson, Jonas Leijonhufvud

Overview

The American edition of the revelatory Swedish book Spotify Untold, the basis of the new Netflix Original series The Playlist, out now!

"Two excellent Swedish journalists recount the historic rise of the company that changed modern music not just as a riveting business tale, but as a lesson in tech geopolitics. Spotify’s Daniel Ek shows why Silicon Valley does not always win.”—David Kirkpatrick, New York Times bestselling author of The Facebook Effect

Steve Jobs tried to stop this moment from ever happening. Google and Microsoft made bids to preempt it. The music industry blocked it time and again. Yet, on a summer's eve in 2011, the whiz kid CEO of a Swedish start-up celebrated his company's US launch.

In the midst of the Apple-Android tech war and a music label crusade against piracy and illegal downloading, Spotify redrew the battle lines, sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, and got the hardline executives at Universal, Sony, and Warner to sign with its "free-mium" platform.

In The Spotify Play, now adapted into an upcoming Netflix Original series, Swedish investigative tech journalists Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, who covered the company from its inception, draw upon hundreds of interviews, previously untapped sources, and in-depth reporting on figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Pony Ma Huateng, and Jimmy Iovine. They have captured the riveting David vs. Goliath story of a disruptive innovator who played the industry giants in a quest to revolutionize the consumption of sound, building today's largest online source of audio, with more than 50 million songs, one million-plus podcasts, and over 300 million users.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781635767445
Publisher:	Diversion Books
Publication date:	01/26/2021
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	989,922
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Sven Carlsson is a tech journalist based in Stockholm. He is currently the technology correspondent for Swedish Radio News. He has a master's degree from Columbia Journalism School and previously worked at the daily newspapers Dagens Industri and Svenska Dagbladet.

Jonas Leijonhufvud has been a business journalist in Sweden since 1998. He interviewed Jeff Bezos when the tech bubble was about to burst, and founder Martin Lorentzon when Spotify had just launched. He has a BA in Media Arts from The University of Arizona and is currently a tech reporter at Dagens Industri, Sweden’s leading business newspaper.



The Spotify Play was updated and translated from Swedish by the authors themselves.

Table of Contents

Prologue x

1 A Secret Idea 1

2 The Engineers 10

3 Rågsved 25

4 Party Like It's 1999 33

5 Better Than Piracy 43

6 "Wealth-type Money" 52

7 All Music for Free 61

8 Bridge to America 79

9 "Schmuck Insurance" 93

10 Sean & Zuck 112

11 "Winter is Coming" 124

13 Spotify TV 142

13 Apple Buys Beats 152

14 Death Valley 169

15 From Nashville to Brooklyn 175

16 Big Data 188

17 Brilliant Sweden 202

18 The Streaming Wars 222

19 Wall Street 235

20 The House That Daniel Built 263

Acknowledgments 279

References and Sources 281

Index 289

About the Authors 296

Editorial Reviews

11/30/2020

Journalists Carlsson and Leijonhufvud trace the victories and struggles of a startup turned behemoth in this fawning corporate biography of music streaming service Spotify. The authors touch on CEO Daniel Ek’s early tech ventures (among other things, he was a consultant at Stardoll, “a website full of virtual paper dolls that catered to young girls”) before he partnered with programmer Andreas Ehn and entrepreneur Martin Lorentzon to launch Spotify in 2008. Ek marketed Spotify as a solution to piracy, won the support of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and got an investment from Napster cofounder Sean Parker. The authors cover Spotify’s decade-long conflict with Apple, whose market dominance Spotify threatened as it took over the music streaming space. The authors display more enthusiasm toward Ek than readers are likely to have (they call frequent lies in his personal life “entrepreneurial hustle,” and spend pages writing about the “headaches” behind his multimillion-dollar homes), and let some of his surprising claims slide as quirks, as with an account of Ek insisting Steve Jobs was calling him to breathe over the phone and intimidate him. Nevertheless, fans of swashbuckling startup success stories will find this one hits the mark. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

The Spotify Play delivers an outsider-to-kingmaker narrative that should be read by every gun-shy entrepreneur too spooked by Silicon Valley’s giants to go head-to-head with them. . . . Carlsson and Leijonhufvud have tracked Mr. Ek’s career since the early days, and their expertise shows. The Spotify Play is . . . a revealing character study of an inventor who proved that the willingness to fight for an idea can indeed pay off—and that you don’t have to be a pirate to have fun doing it.”—Wall Street Journal

“Why has Sweden generated so much digital music innovation? How did it gestate Spotify, which to this day stands tall against almighty Apple? Two excellent Swedish journalists recount the historic rise of the company that changed modern music not just as a riveting business tale, but as a lesson in tech geopolitics. Spotify’s wily and determined Daniel Ek shows why Silicon Valley does not always win.”—David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

“[The Spotify Play] reads like a movie script. This book perfectly captures the story of how tech changed music—and of the people who made it happen.”—Daniel Goldberg, co-author of Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything

“A fast-paced tale of a Swedish startup overcoming technical and financial obstacles and larger competitors, The Spotify Play will fascinate anyone who streams music or is interested in the music industry, Silicon Valley, or the venture capital business.”—John A. Riggs, author of High Tension: FDR’s Battle to Power America

“Finally, a deep and insightful dive into the music industry’s most disruptive new player and the characters behind the Swedish giant’s global audio crusade.”—Shirley Halperin, Executive Editor, Music, Variety

“An impressive, in-depth look into one of the most successful tech-companies in Europe. The Spotify Play is an initiated account, even for someone with an inside perspective.”—Pär-Jörgen Pärson, Spotify’s first investor and partner at Northzone

“A fresh, inside take on the Swedish success story that disrupted piracy, transformed the music industry and made streaming the new norm.”—Per Sundin, president of Universal Music Nordic Region, and early Spotify supporter

"Two Swedish business reporters’ tale of the tenacious rise of the streaming-music giant that has fended off assaults from Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Taylor Swift. Carlsson and Leijonhufvud are seasoned business reporters who’ve garnered informative scoops about the company . . . An informative report from the streaming wars."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-11-17
Two Swedish business reporters’ tale of the tenacious rise of the streaming-music giant that has fended off assaults from Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Taylor Swift.

When Spotify launched in Sweden in 2006, it had a brash agenda in a chaotic time for online music. Apple’s iTunes store had established a viable and legal marketplace for the post-Napster era, but Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek wanted to pursue a more open, stream-friendly, and cheaper alternative. The first chapters of the book, previously published in Sweden and translated and updated by the authors, detail the Spotify team’s dogged efforts to build their technology, though its greater challenge was convincing the music industry that a “freemium model” could work in its favor. In that regard, Ek had help from Sean Parker, who co-founded Napster and later introduced Ek to Mark Zuckerberg, a critical connection when Spotify began making inroads in the U.S. Headwinds were strong: Apple slow-walked approving Spotify to the app store, deals with major labels required sizable concessions from the company, and artists protested Spotify’s often skimpy payments to artists. (Swift withheld her 2014 album 1989 from Spotify for a time.) Carlsson and Leijonhufvud are seasoned business reporters who’ve garnered informative scoops about the company—e.g., a failed streaming-video venture, the terms of a deal with Sony Music, and abandoned efforts to buy Tidal or be bought by Google. Though the authors have a seemingly bottomless repository of song titles that serve as apt section headings, little elevates the narrative above sober, fairly dry business journalism. But it’s not all their fault: Ek isn’t an especially charismatic executive, and the authors characterize his leadership for the most part as blandly aloof. Ek is no Jobs, but he’s clearly held his own on the playing field Jobs created.

An informative report from the streaming wars, though better suited for startup geeks than music nerds.

Kirkus Reviews