A Chat With The King of Music: An Interview With Daniel Ek

Zuckerberg: “We all hope that in the future the economy is one where everyone can pursue their interests and their creativity and can have jobs that are more exciting for them . . . Overall it's not like one model is going to work. It's not just like everyone is going to be able to make enough money off of an ads revenue share or something like tha... See more

Today's consumer subscription leaders are aggressively expanding the definition of what it means to serve their customers — Peloton's lofty vision in its S-1 and Daniel Ek's reframing of Spotify as an all-encompassing audio platform are the two most notable examples.

“Part of what we want to do is not just create a model of how audio can be transformed,” she said, “but also make a push forward for creator-driven culture so that this culture isn’t being shaped by the platforms and technologists, but the artists and creatives and talent.”

Ek: “It used to be before that if you were a musician, you just put out music. But almost every successful creator now is omni- talented and omni-channel. That means that they are on YouTube putting up videos. They are on Instagram. They are perhaps putting together brands and putting it on Shopify, but they're also putting out music and merchandis... See more

“The reality is we’ve seen very few examples where this has worked. The exception is with the large platforms – Apple, Google, and to an extent, Facebook.”