![]() Leijonhufvud: Music streaming is becoming a commodity, so Spotify needs to find new unique selling points. How do you view Spotify’s push into podcasting? We’ve promised anonymity to many sources, which makes the really interesting moments tricky to talk about. But a lot of people have been nervous about talking to us, too. This is truly an international story and it’s been exciting to fit the puzzle pieces together. Then we wrote a large part of the book in a house near Santa Monica in Los Angeles, where many of the American record companies are located. We were in London twice and both traveled to New York. You traveled some distances to sit down with sources… And it was of course exciting to dig into all the secrets surrounding how the record companies got rich on Spotify, how Ek almost bought both Tidal and SoundCloud, and how the stock trading in the most exclusive of global financial circles set the stage for Spotify’s listing on Wall Street. After several months of research, we could finally account for how Jobs actively worked to oppose Spotify’s establishment in the U.S., and what he may have been thinking. In your reporting and ultimate findings, what were you most surprised to learn?Ĭarlsson: I think we both felt a rush of adrenaline when we unraveled the details about the conflict between Apple and Spotify. This is a fast-paced, character-driven book that tells the story from the inside of the company. So while we haven’t been able to interview the founders, we’ve talked to so many former senior executives, board members and colleagues. If Ek were to talk about such sensitive topics in book form, do it in their own way with full control.Ĭarlsson: Spotify is known the world over, but so much of its story has never been told before. We address Spotify’s constant struggle with Apple in our book. Spotify is challenging Apple on a legal level right now. Ek seems to have chosen to close the shutters completely. That finally allowed Ek to enter the U.S.ĭid you have participation from Spotify for the book? Because Spotify was hindered by Steve Jobs, it forced the company to sweeten its deals with the record companies. Jonas Leijonhufvud: Secret deals between Spotify and Universal Music Group, and Spotify and Sony Music. What ultimately allowed Spotify to break through the American armor? Jobs saw music downloads via iTunes as a comparative advantage in his ‘holy war’ against Google’s Android platform. Apple had roughly 80 percent of the market for digital music distribution in the U.S. The major record companies seem to have been quite loyal to the iTunes Music Store, and to Jobs personally. market, in large part due to pressure from Apple. To us, Ek’s claim is as a reflection of how paranoid and anxious he must have felt in 2010, when Spotify was being denied access to the U.S. Whether Steve Jobs actually called Daniel Ek is something we can’t verify. Sven Carlsson: We have that from a trusted source. Let’s start with your opening scene: Spotify’s CEO confiding in a colleague that he believes Steve Jobs was, essentially, prank-calling him. launch And Spotify TV, the streamer’s failed attempt to topple big guns Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV (read a translated excerpt of that chapter).Īt the core of the book, say the authors, is “a character-driven story of Spotify’s rise from a tiny start-up to the biggest music streaming company in the world.” Carlsson and Leijonhufvud recently sat down with Variety. Among the revelations: How close Spotify came close to acquiring Tidal, and even closer to buying Soundcloud How Microsoft, Google and Tencent all offered to buy Spotify at various points How Ek scored a valuable partnership with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg just ahead of Spotify’s U.S.
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