Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek
Daniel Ek is a Swedish entrepreneur and a technologist. Ek is co-founder and CEO of the music streaming service Spotify and previous CEO of µTorrent, a popular BitTorrent client...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth21 February 1983
CountrySweden
Daniel Ek quotes about
want inventor
I'm not an inventor. I just want to make things better.
sweden born piracy
I was born in Sweden, and in Sweden we are known for the piracy services.
growing-up passion technology
I had two passions growing up - one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two - and there was Spotify.
guitar acoustics really-cool
I actually bought a travel guitar, and that guitar is really cool. You can actually fold the guitar, and you can plug headphones into it, but it's acoustic, or semi-acoustic.
the-end-of-the-day want today
At the end of the day, I want the music industry to be larger than what it is today.
artist two labels
Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.
two people gaga
In general, people are comfortable sharing their music. There are two exceptions, though - Lady Gaga and Britney Spears.
order facts population
In order for a service to be social, you've really got to start from the ground up. The fact that almost a third of the U.S. population have even heard of Spotify is really because they've seen it on Facebook and friends have been sharing.
artist diversity people
It disturbed me that the music industry had gone down the drain, even though people were listening to more music than ever and from a greater diversity of artists.
song news matter
Music isn't like news, where it's what happened five minutes ago or even 10 seconds ago that matters. With music, a song from the 1960s could be as relevant to someone today as the latest Ke$ha song.
guy uncertain wanted
I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be. I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.
people advice networking
With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company.
winning musician want
At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. We want you to win because your music is the best music.
thinking artist creating
This is a way for artists to communicate directly to their fans. If you think of an artist like Bruno Mars, he's using Spotify, creating playlists and listening to music through it.