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Daniel Ek was born on February 21, 1983, in Ragsved, Sweden. -
When Ek was in high school, he started making websites in his room to help businesses. -
After Napster was shut down, Ek came up with the idea for Spotify. HIs idea was that "you can never legislate away from piracy. Laws can definitely help, but it doesn't take away the problem. The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry – that gave us Spotify." -
Ek became the CEO of μTorrent with Ludvig Strigeus until the business was sold. Following that, Ek and Strigeus began the idea of Spotify. -
Partnered with Martin Lorentzon, Ek completed the first launch of Spotify. Spotify was only able to be used via invitation in The UK, Scandinavia, France, and Spain. -
Spotify made a deal with Telia, a telecommunication serivce provider, to give Spotify the ability to be used on TVs and computers.
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At this time, the average Spotify user has 15,000 tracks ina collection, and that overall over 100 millions user-made playlists had been created. -
Spotify made two different kind of account plans, Premium and Unlimited. These accounts gave users more freedom to the website. -
Spotify was finally launched in the U.S., with free listening being limited prior to the release. -
Spotify became an official music streaming service, first being used within desktop computers. -
IN October 2016, Lorentzon stepped down as chairman, and left Ek as the CEO. -
Ek was named the most powerful person in the music industry by Billboard. -
Along with the discounted premium subscription, Spotify expanded to over 30 more countries. -
Spotify had reached an amount of 140 million users active. -
Spotify launched their AI DJ, automating playlists and queues based off of the users most listened to artists, tracks, and albums.