The Spotify Play

November 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.

December 1, 2020
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.

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