Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explains how the company plans to help artists (and itself) make money

He tells The Verge that Spotify will incorporate a hybrid business model with three distinct parts. One will involve the typical user subscription revenue, another is advertising dollars through its podcast ad marketplace and music streaming ads, and the third is a la carte options, like helping musicians and podcasters sell merch, tour tickets, or... See more

Crucially, Spotify announced that 7,500 musicians are making at least $100,000 per year through its platform, which isn’t much considering the service is available in 93 markets.

The answer, however, may be unintuitive, but I still want to share it which is, in the end, I think this whole notion about what is ads and what’s subscription, and the fact that when you look back on the internet there was this division. I just don’t believe that’s going to be true in the future. Think about television. It used to be the same way.... See more

In the past in the internet, you’ve seen platforms choose either to be ad-supported or to be subscription. In the future, I think you’re going to see ad-supported, subscription, and a la carte play key roles.

We have a number of different metrics that we’re internally looking at evaluating the success of this, but a huge part of it is just around can we create an awareness, can we create an audience for a creator that rivals the one that they would have been able to [make] on their own?

On Clubhouse: I think the broader shift that has been true with the internet has been most of the hours of consumption, we believe, will be moving from linear to on-demand. Meaning consumers should be able to consume whatever content that they want on their terms and not necessarily be beholden to someone else’s schedule.