2008
Spotify launches
A Swedish startup built as a legal answer to music piracy opened its streaming service in Europe and grew into the world's largest music platform.
Spotify opened its music streaming service to the public on October 7, 2008. The launch covered several European markets, including Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Spain, and Great Britain, with different tiers and prices in each country. Listeners could play songs on demand from a large catalog without buying or downloading them, either free with advertising or by paying for a subscription. Access was tightly managed at first: in Britain, the free tier opened to public registration only in February 2009, and the company later returned it to an invitation-only model after a surge of sign-ups.
The company behind the service had been founded in Stockholm in April 2006 by Daniel Ek, a former chief technology officer of the website Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of the marketing firm Tradedoubler. Ek said he started thinking about the idea around 2002, after Napster shut down and the file-sharing network Kazaa took its place. He concluded that laws alone could not stop piracy, and that only a legal service convenient enough to compete with it, while still paying the music industry, could win listeners back. His first pitch to Lorentzon was broader, covering video, films, and images as well as music.
The early years were costly. Spotify lost about 31.8 million Swedish kronor in 2008, just after launch. Growth came steadily, though. By October 2010 it had 10 million registered users in Europe, half a million of them paying, and it reached the United States in July 2011.
Why it matters
Spotify helped change how people listen to music, moving the habit from owning files and discs to streaming from a vast shared library. Its model, which pays rights holders according to each artist’s share of total streams, became central to the recording industry’s income, though many musicians have criticized how little each stream pays. The company gives roughly 70 percent of its revenue to rights holders.
The service later expanded into podcasts and audiobooks, listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2018, and reported its first full-year profit in 2024. By the end of 2025 it counted 751 million monthly active users, including 290 million paying subscribers.
Did you know?
According to Daniel Ek, the name Spotify came from a word he misheard Lorentzon say. The founders only later linked it to the words “spot” and “identify”.
