Quotes from Daniel Ek

If you look at Adele, the reason she did so well was she created great music. It wasn't about a clever marketing trick.

I had two passions growing up - one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two - and there was Spotify.

People just want to have access to all of the world's music.

I'm not an inventor. I just want to make things better.

At the end of the day, I want the music industry to be larger than what it is today.

We really do believe that we can improve the world, one song at a time.

Spotify is a platform: it could be expanded to other types of content.

I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be. I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.

In general, people are comfortable sharing their music. There are two exceptions, though - Lady Gaga and Britney Spears.

Spotify wants to make consuming music simpler and at the same time pay the rights owners.

With Spotify, people don't get it until they try it. Then they tell their friends.

I'm just interested in building a company that doesn't necessarily change lives but adapts people's behaviour.

Buying sports cars, going to expensive nightclubs, spraying people with champagne and things like that - what I learnt is that it wasn't for me, and, in fact, I feel pretty empty after doing that.

We are passionate about making it so that users enjoy the music that they want to enjoy but at the same time fairly compensates artists. That's not the same as saving the music industry.

There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify, what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music.

I actually bought a travel guitar, and that guitar is really cool. You can actually fold the guitar, and you can plug headphones into it, but it's acoustic, or semi-acoustic.

There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify, what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music.

I had two passions growing up - one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two - and there was Spotify.

There are millions of people who consume music illegally every month. Just getting them into a legal service will make the music industry way bigger than it's ever been before.