Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) is a Swedish audio streaming platform founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006, and the dominant player in music streaming with over 750 million monthly active users and 290 million paid subscribers as of late 2025. The company runs on a freemium model — a free, ad-supported tier drives user acquisition while premium subscriptions ($11.99/mo individual) generate roughly 87% of $19.4B trailing twelve-month revenue.
In January 2026, Ek transitioned to executive chairman, handing co-CEO duties to Gustav Söderström (product/technology) and Alex Norström (business). The platform expanded well beyond music into podcasts, audiobooks, and AI-driven personalization — Discover Weekly and Wrapped became cultural touchstones in their own right. Scale has not resolved the tension at the center of its model: Spotify accounts for roughly 20% of all recorded music revenue, yet only about 2% of artists on the platform earn more than $1,000 per year from streaming. As 📝The Hustle has documented, the economics disproportionately favor top-tier artists and the labels that own their catalogs, leaving independent musicians subsidizing a system that wasn't built for them. Spotify is less a music company than an attention infrastructure company — music is the substrate, but the business is engagement, data, and advertising.