Background information

Hard facts

  • Founded: 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon.
  • Location: Headquarters in the UK with offices in Stockholm, Paris, Oslo, Madrid, Amsterdam and New York.
  • Number of tracks: Over 15,000,000 licensed globally. Catalogue size varies in each country.
  • Registered users: 10,000,000
  • Paying users: 3,000,000
  • Goal: To help people to listen to whatever music they want, whenever they want, wherever they want.
  • Number of employees: 300
  • The name: A combination of spot and identify.

The music service

Spotify is an online music service offering users the ability to stream more than 15 million tracks on demand using Spotify’s unique technology. Spotify will be marketed both as a premium monthly subscription service and a version which is free for consumers to use, and supported by advertising.

Testimonials

Daniel Ek will earn himself a place in Music history alongside the inventors of vinyl, CD and the download.
– Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Channel 4

The first streaming music service I have used with shares three qualities that I think most consumers are seeking – it has a huge catalogue, an attractive and simple user interface and its legal.
– Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent

Spotify is so good.
– Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

Playing w/Spotify, hot damn it’s responsive – plays pretty much any song on earth in < 1 second.
– Kevin Rose

Now here's a fun game. Spotify Poetry.http://spotifypoetry.tumblr.com/. Tag your poems #spotifypoetry.
– Stephen Fry

The more tracks that are streamed on Spotify the more downloads occur on other services.
– Scott Cohen, Founder/VP of international at The Orchard

Spotify is superior in functionality to all its competitors.
– Bob Lefsetz

Social networks and blogs

Stay up to date with all the latest Spotify news by following our Facebook group, Twitter and or blog.

Company history

Spotify was founded in April 2006 by serial entrepreneurs Daniel Ek (previous CTO at Stardoll, founder of Advertigo and Evertigo among others) and Martin Lorentzon (one of two co-founders of Tradedoubler, the largest European online affiliate advertising company).

About Spotify

Spotify is an award-winning music service offering a legal and superior quality alternative to music piracy. Spotify provides instant access to whatever music you want, whenever and wherever you
want it, through a simple, clean and quick to use platform via an ad-supported, free-to-the-user service and a paid subscription service. With access to millions of songs through your computer,
on your mobile and beyond, Spotify makes it easier than ever to play and share music legally.

Additional resources

Go to our press room to get press images and more information about the service.