Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope - BusinessWeek

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Worldwide revenue for the recording industry peaked in 1999 at $27 billion, according to International Federation of the Phonographic Industry IFPI. By 2008 it had plummeted to $14 billion. That year, Universal, EMI Music, Sony SNE, Warner WMG, and Merlin, which represents independent music labels, each agreed to an experiment: They would give their entire catalogs to a Swedish startup run by a then-25-year-old with no experience in the music industry. That company, Spotify, entered seven European markets and began giving out invites to listen to 13 million songs, on demand, for free. “We had to try everything,” Sundin says.

At the time, the industry was pressing European countries to write laws in line with a European Union directive to stiffen civil enforcement of intellectual-property rights. Record labels had to win not only in court but also among the public. Sundin saw a demo of Spotify and laid out the case to his bosses in London. “To get legislators on our side,” he explained, “we need services for the kids.” “This can’t be true,” he thought after the demo. “It can’t be this good.”

via Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope – BusinessWeek.

Strange Random Music Quote:

[An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the “William Tell Overture” without thinking of the Lone Ranger – John Chesson

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