The Spotify Play

How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance

By: Sven Carlsson, Jonas Leijonhufvud

Narrated by: Chris Sorensen

Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Steve Jobs tried to stop this moment from ever happening. Google and Microsoft made bids to preempt it. The music industry blocked it time and again. Yet, on a summer's eve in 2011, the whiz-kid CEO of a Swedish start-up celebrated his company's US launch.

In the midst of the Apple-Android tech war and a music-label crusade against piracy and illegal downloading, Spotify redrew the battle lines, sent shock waves through Silicon Valley, and got the hardline executives at Universal, Sony, and Warner to sign with its "free-mium" platform.

In The Spotify Play, Swedish investigative tech journalists Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, who covered the company from its inception, draw upon hundreds of interviews, previously untapped sources, and in-depth reporting on figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Sean Parker, Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, Pony Ma Huateng, and Jimmy Iovine. They have captured the riveting David vs. Goliath story of a disruptive innovator who played the industry giants in a quest to revolutionize the consumption of sound, building today's largest online source of audio, with more than 50 million songs, one million-plus podcasts, and more than 300 million users.

©2021 Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud (P)2021 Gildan Media

Great book for entertainment

There wasn’t as much of a focus on logistics but more of a focus on the story of Spotify.

Good overview of Spotify as a business

Overall this was a good overview of Spotify as a business. Personally I am more interested in music and music apps as influencers of pop culture so if you are also like me you may find it a little dry. However it did hold my interest all the way through.

Sometimes the narration seemed a little weird and the titles of sub-chapters were difficult to make out because they sounded blended into the narrative. But once I got used to it, it wasn't too bad.

Daniel vs The Goliaths: Daniel wins

I loved the details of how Daniel Ek went from helping his schoolmates build websites in the late 1990s, thru the illegal music file-sharing times to his vision for a better streaming music service. Also loved the many descriptions of his business allies and investors. And…the incredible story of this tiny nothing company taking on the largest tech consumer companies in the world…and winning against Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Great Book in detail not only about Spotify.

This book is an amazing book describing the origins and current state of the music streaming industry. It includes Information about Spotify, Apple Music, Beats Music, Tidal, Pandora, Deezer, YouTube Music, Google, Soundcloud, Podcasts, Joe Rogan, etc. is a must listen if you are intrigued how music streaming works and how it bypassed the Napster years. Five stars for this book.

fine, its okay for a background on spotify

fine, its okay for a background on spotify, it moves too slowly. They author titles sub-chapters with a song title. It gets old and slows the book down. I gave up on the book as there wasn't anything inspiring.

Spoiler alert

Usually not one to be so negative, however, this was disappointing on so many levels. I’m a huge Spotify fan and was looking forward to getting a peek behind the curtain. The narrator was quite literally awful. I’ve never intentionally avoided titles due to narrators, but this guy will be the first. Just listen to the sample clip for about 30 secs, and you’ll get the idea. And the narrative was a giant puff piece. No deep reporting or anything remotely critical of Ek. Reads like Ek hired the authors. Finally, it also was just poorly written. Underdeveloped sections combined with random, gossipy factoids and too many song title section headers. Very annoying after the first hour or so. Huge disappointment.