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Digital
Ek responds to recent Spotify reports
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 8 August 2013
Spotify boss Daniel Ek has been chatting to the Wall Street Journal about his firm’s recently published financials for 2012, which showed growing revenues but further losses.
Noting that his business is still in its first cycle of growth, he tells the business paper: “I think a lot of people just look at the financials and say: ‘Oh wow, losses, that’s really, really bad’. That’s not at all how we see it, we see that we’ve actually now proved our business model. The difference between what we pay out in royalties and what we actually take in in revenue is increasing, which is positive”.
Ek also speaks about the other big story that has surrounded his company in recent weeks, the fallout that followed Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke’s public bitching of his business (and the streaming business in general, though the focus was very much on Ek’s firm).
Saying he isn’t surprised that some in the artist community have reacted they way they have, he ponders: “All they see is millions of streams, and they see, you know, not millions of dollars in the end, but thousands of dollars, and they think that a million streams is comparable to a million downloads, which it obviously isn’t”.
Elsewhere in Spotify news, the streaming firm has announced a partnership with Vodafone, which will see the mobile provider’s 4G customers in the UK given bundled access to Spotify Premium with their phone contracts. Though if said customers think music’s a big pile of shit, or are a member of Radiohead, they can get Sky Sports Mobile TV instead.
On the Vodafone tie-up, Spotify’s Global Head of Telecom and ISP Partnerships Michael Abbattista said in a statement: “Spotify partnering with companies like Vodafone increases revenue streams to the music industry, and so provides benefits for fans and artists alike”.
