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Exclusive: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Apple, Facebook, Netflix–and the future

An intimate look inside the mind of the CEO bending the music industry into his vision for it.

Exclusive: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek on Apple, Facebook, Netflix–and the future

[Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Spotify]

BY Robert Safianlong read

Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek, who calls himself an introvert and rarely talks to the media, spent more than six hours in interviews with former Fast Company editor and founder of The Flux Group Robert Safian. What follows is an edited transcript of the sessions, which took place in both Stockholm and New York City, both before and after Spotify went public this spring.

Daniel Ek: I haven’t done a lot of these interviews because I don’t believe Spotify is about any one individual. I don’t want to diminish my role, but in almost all innovations, it’s the collaboration of the team that creates something in a creative process that’s hard to capture. What often happens, people simplify the process and put it on one person who then looks like they’re some sort of demigod, infallible, up until the moment when they’re not and then the whole world collapses. I have some strengths but I have a lot of weaknesses, too. I wanted you to hear that directly from me.

Fast Company: The music industry, at least in the beginning, seemed to focus on the weaknesses.

DK: When it comes to me and Spotify, there’s two sides of the story. There’s the positive story, and then there’s the dissent in the industry. Traditionally there’s been very little trust between any of the participants in the music business: between songwriters and publishers, songwriters and artists, record companies and the retailers. Everyone assumes everyone else is out to screw them. So the incentives have always been aligned on, can I get the money now? Because I don’t know what’s going to happen later.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Safian is the editor and managing director of The Flux Group. From 2007 through 2017, Safian oversaw Fast Company’s print, digital and live-events content, as well as its brand management and business operations More


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