61 Quotes by Daniel Ek

I had two passions growing up – one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two – and there was Spotify.

In general, people are comfortable sharing their music. There are two exceptions, though – Lady Gaga and Britney Spears.

Music isn’t like news, where it’s what happened five minutes ago or even 10 seconds ago that matters. With music, a song from the 1960s could be as relevant to someone today as the latest Ke$ha song.

This is a way for artists to communicate directly to their fans. If you think of an artist like Bruno Mars, he’s using Spotify, creating playlists and listening to music through it.

With Spotify, people don’t get it until they try it. Then they tell their friends.

I actually bought a travel guitar, and that guitar is really cool. You can actually fold the guitar, and you can plug headphones into it, but it’s acoustic, or semi-acoustic.

There are millions of people who consume music illegally every month. Just getting them into a legal service will make the music industry way bigger than it’s ever been before.

People just want to have access to all of the world’s music.

I'm not saying you can't be successful in the music industry without Spotify. But when I look at the future of music, I don't think scarcity is the model anymore. We have to embrace ubiquity - that music is everywhere.