Spotify Is Good For The Music Industry, Its CEO Says : The Record : NPR
American music lovers took note when the digital music service Spotify arrived in the States this summer. It’s already Europe’s largest paid subscription music service. Spotify’s essential offering is a robust catalog of music — some 15 million songs - available for on-demand streaming. Users can call up songs for free and download them to a mobile music player for a monthly fee.
Some industry watchers see Spotify’s offering as the end of the music download business. But Daniel Ek — the company’s Swedish-born, 28-year-old founder and CEO — feels differently.
“I don’t want to be characterized as an iTunes killer,” Ek tells Weekend Edition host Audie Cornish. “What we really are trying to do is move people away from piracy into a legal model that contributes revenue back to the music industry. It’s really that simple, and I think the key is by creating more convenient products.”