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

“You can’t work in music. You have to find another job.”

Per Sundin’s concerned mother was on the phone. It was the summer of 2006, and both Sundins were watching a debate between Sweden’s two major party candidates for Prime Minister. Earlier that year, police in Stockholm had confiscated servers and questioned the founders of The Pirate Bay, a file sharing site that had been ignoring increasingly piqued letters from the American entertainment industry. Media piracy had become a national campaign issue in Sweden, which according to Harvard’s Berkman Center is second only to Japan in speed, price, and availability of broadband Internet access. During the debate, the moderator asked the candidates how they felt about file sharing. Both agreed that piracy was too easy, and that it didn’t make sense to criminalize an entire generation of music lovers.