Daniel Ek In The News

The Brutal Reality: Power is shifting to AI-generated music and algorithmic discovery. Music rightsholders must wake up to the opportunity.

Stef Van Vugt, founder of Fruits Music, on Spotify's quiet moves and the rise of Suno

Spotify is playing a dangerous game…

This article originally appeared within the latest MBW+ Monthly Review email, issued exclusively to MBW+ subscribers.

From the bidding war for Hipgnosis Songs Fund to ByteDance’s battle for TikTok in the US… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up

The five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…

Amid controversy over Spotify’s songwriter payments, Daniel Ek cashes out $118.8 million in company shares

Ek's move on the New York Stock Exchange comes amid criticism for Spotify for reducing the royalty rate via which it pays songwriters in the US

Milk & Honey now represents Travis Kelce and 80 other sports stars – but its world still ‘revolves around the songwriter’

Lucas Keller talks Travis Kelce, Spotify, A&R, and where his company is headed

A new ‘music-only’ subscription tier is coming to Spotify, confirms Daniel Ek… and 4 other things we learned on the company’s latest earnings call

Spotify is making good on its aim to become more than a music streaming service

Spotify subscriber base grew by 3m to 239m in Q1, as company posts biggest ever quarterly profit

Spotify posted a "quarterly high" operating income of €168 million ($182.41m)

Taylor Swift has a laudable history of standing up to Big Tech in the name of artist compensation. By embracing TikTok in 2024, she’s broken ranks with that narrative.

When Swift grappled with Apple in 2015, she noted that the fight was "not about me" – it was about other artists. The TikTok situation is the exact opposite.