The Story of Spotify

3:17 He’s right. I know numerous people who stopped pirating music because of Spotify. Taking down Pirate Bay and various other torrenting sites didn’t do anything except inconvenience people, but offering an affordable and convenient option did.

Another genius Spotify move is the whole “personalization of users”. The yearly wrapped they do. I think that’s one of the things that gives them so much more leverage over Apple Music.

I signed up for Spotify Premium years ago when I was once at a barbecue where people were listening to YouTube playlists and putting up with constant ads. I paid for a month just so I wouldn't be bothered with ads. Since I had a whole month ahead of me, I created a playlist with 10 or so songs to listen in the car, and the algorithm took care of the rest, making me daily lists of songs it figured I would like. Now maybe 95% of my favorite songs were suggested by Spotify's algorithm. My old SD card with a playlist painstakingly put together out of Google searches, music forums and torrent downloaded discographies was completely forgotten.

It's not about who came first, it's eventually about who did great first. Spotify proved that well.

Spotify did not come up with the idea for online music on-demand or even streaming. Not sure who did but RealNetworks and Zune preceded them with subscriptions and millions of songs and synced to devices. Spotify just nailed the experience and executed well.

I went straight from downloading illegal music to Spotify because it was just so much easier. It’s a brilliant tool to discover new music that’s catered to what you already like. I’ve been a happy user for over 10 years and never looked back at my SoulSeek days 😁

Spotify has some many great features. The 'number' radio is amazing. Whenever I like a song, I just put on the number radio on that song and helps me discover so many other great tracks.

I still remember being in the early access U.S Spotify in 2011, what a time lol I also remember one of my friends buying all his music from iTunes, I thought he was nuts 😂

I think stolen indie music being put on spotify is a very common thing that is not really addressed by spotify. A few musicians I've followed all mentioned encountering vert similar things, music they put on youtube gets stolen and put up on spotify.

Wrapped is by far one of the best marketing campaigns of all time, and most competitors have not caught up, they're not even close.

I remember my internet provider would freely include spotify access. After couple years they stop it, you know they got you addicted to the new thing and they knew you would happily pay $10 a month for it now. They had a smart marketing strategy over and over, that was the key to becoming so big.

nice to see a story about a turnaround to success instead of failure. while the fails are intriguing and just as digestable, the successes are a bit more inspiring to watch.

I'm from the UK. I remember being stood in the living room in 2010 and my dad was listening to something on Spotify, using the web browser built into a PS3. Even using that clunky browser, it was awesome to see how smoothly it all ran. Each song he wanted seemed to be there too. Spotify were the first to do it right!

One thing YouTube Music can't be faulted for is the sheer choice available. I used to have a Spotify premium account but I couldn't find lots of artists and tracks that I like but I was able to find them, and a whole lot more, on YouTube Music. Thus I dropped Spotify and opened a YouTube premium with YouTube Music account - the added bonus of which is no ads in YouTube videos. A win-win for me.

since i started subscribing to spotify years ago, i dont think i will ever leave the platform. it feels incomplete without spotify, like it is part of me now.

What I love about Spotify most is its recommendation algorithm. I found my favourite band because of it and I'm genuinely happy to pay them for their work.

Not particularly related to the content but I leave random songs on repeat overnight with the volume down to help struggling bands. You may not have heard of U2, but I've made them a few quid.

For controversies I am surprised you didn't talk about recording companies paying Spotify to get their artists on playlists to manipulate audiences and music charts.

Hope this video gets you even more success with your previous and newly released albums. You do great work. Thanks for making tech history fun.

I love your documentaries! Thank you for your great work! In 2012 I got my first smartphone and Spotify became available in Germany. Until then I was still running around with MP3 players and the songs on them ... well, at best they were copied from CD or at worse from Youtube with absolutely poor quality. I tried Spotify and was thrilled and as a student I only paid half! The app was very slow at the beginning and crashed more often, but that changed pretty darn quickly. I tried four, five different streaming services last year because Spotify wanted to raise prices here ... either the battery management was terrible or the apps miserably programmed or I did not find what I was looking for - I came back to Spotify again remorsefully and will probably not leave anytime soon.