Intro
Spotify is a worldwide name, a brand recognizable by hundreds of millions of people. Its simple yet effective logo trademarks the audio streaming platform.
Let’s skip the tracks and learn about the company rather than the music, as we shuffle into everything you need to know about Spotify.
Let’s waste no time and dive straight into our list.
Where it all started
Spotify hails from the Swedish capital of Stockholm. The Nordic city was where it all began for co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
Sweden does actually have one of the fastest broadband internet systems in the world and Swedish people couldn’t wait any longer to gain access to piracy fee music.
Loss
Spotify made a loss of four million dollars after first launching and didn’t actually turn a profit until 2019. A staggering 13 years after the initial launch.
Crazy when you consider how much of a household name the brand is.
Growth
Founded on the 23rd April 2006, no one could have quite predicted how rapidly Spotify would descend on to the music streaming scene.
The service was officially launched on 7th October 2008 and rolled out in several European countries.
The company currently has over 120 million paying customers, and at over $10 a month to subscribe that’s a lot of money. But how much?
Worth
It’s hard to put an exact figure on Spotify’s worth, however, most sources report a net worth in excess of 20 billion dollars.
To put this in perspective, its worth roughly 20% of the value of McDonald’s. Not bad for a company which only broke ground in 2006.
Name
The name of Spotify derives from the words ‘Spot’ and ‘Identity’ merged together. However, initially, the co-founders were quite literally sat in a flat shouting ideas at each other.
That was until Lorentzon shouted out the name Spotify, at this point they immediately turned to Google to check its availability. It had zero hits. Spotify was born.
The men behind it all
I’d like to pretend this is all some sort of fairytale story, but in reality co-founder, Martin Ek was already a millionaire at the age of 23 after selling his adtech startup company.
The man he sold it to? Spotify business partner Martin Lorentzon of course.
Lorentzon was a very wealthy man before he even shouted ‘Spotify’. Afterall, Lorentzon had already co-founded Swedish digital marketing company Tradedoubler.
Record breakers
As of January 2020, Ed Sheeran’s 2017 anthem ‘Shape of You’ remains Spotify’s most-streamed song, Post Malone ‘Rockstar’ and Drake ‘One Dance’ make up the podium.
Shape of You has an incredible 2.5 billion streams. This literally shows the massive reach spotify has and the big reason why underground artists often buy spotify streams to get an initial boost.
Summary
We hope you enjoyed this article and have spotted and identified plenty of facts about Swedish music giants Spotify.
The existence of Spotify will hopefully continue long into the future, allowing users to listen to music for a reasonable fee.
We hope you enjoyed this article, what’s your favorite song on Spotify?
Let us know in the comments section!
By Adam.