History

Spotify was founded in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden,^[13] by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of Tradedoubler.^[14][15] According to Ek, the company’s title was initially misheard from a name shouted by Lorentzon. Later they conceived a portmanteau of “spot” and “identify”.^[16] Daniel Ek’s initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.^[17]

Early international launches

In February 2009, Spotify opened public registration for the free service tier in the United Kingdom.^[14] Registrations surged following the release of the mobile service, leading Spotify to halt registration for the free service in September, returning the UK to an invitation-only policy.^[18]

Spotify launched in the United States in July 2011, and offered a six-month, ad-supported trial period, during which new users could listen to an unlimited amount of music for free. In January 2012, the free trial periods began to expire, limiting users to ten hours of streaming each month and five plays per song.^[19] Using PC streaming, a similar structure to the one used today allowed the listener to play songs freely, but with ads every 4–7 songs depending on listening duration. Later that same year, in March, Spotify removed all limits on the free service tier indefinitely, including mobile devices.^[20]

In April 2016, Ek and Lorentzon wrote an open letter to Swedish politicians, demanding action in three areas that they claimed hindered the company’s ability to recruit top talent as Spotify grew, including access to flexible housing, better education in the programming and development fields, and stock options. Ek and Lorentzon wrote that to continue competing in a global economy, politicians needed to respond with new policies, or thousands of Spotify jobs would be moved from Sweden to the United States.^[21]

Other developments

Streaming records

In October 2015, “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran became the first song to pass 500 million streams.^[25] A month later, Spotify announced that “Lean On” by Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring MØ was its most-streamed song of all time with over 525 million streams worldwide.^[26] In April 2016, Rihanna overtook Justin Bieber to become the biggest artist on Spotify, with 31.3 million monthly active listeners.^[27] In May 2016, Rihanna was overtaken by Drake with 31.85 million monthly listeners.^[28] In December 2016, Drake’s just-under 36 million monthly listeners were overtaken by the Weeknd‘s 36.068 million.^[29] Later that same month, Drake’s song “One Dance” became the first song to hit one billion streams on Spotify.^[30][31] Upon its release in August 2017, the single “Look What You Made Me Do” by Taylor Swift earned over eight million streams within 24 hours, breaking the record for the most single-day streams for a track.^[32] On 19 June 2018, XXXTentacion‘s hit single “Sad!” broke Swift’s single-day streaming record, amassing 10.4 million streams the day after he was fatally shot in Florida.^[33]