Spotify’s mission is to give people access to all the music they want all the time – in a completely legal and accesible way.
Daniel Ek was the Chief Technology Officer of Stardoll, a provider of online games, and an entrepreneur. Growing up, he had two passions – music and technology. He had even joined a band, though it never saw success. Ek was concerned about the amount of music piracy in his native Sweden. So he thought about starting a business that would use technology to address this issue.
Specifically, his idea was to create a version of iTunes that streamed music. The content would be provided directly from record labels and media companies, and thus would be digital rights management (DRM) protected. Artists would be paid according to their “market share” — the total number of streams for their songs as a percentage of total songs streamed on …