How did a Swedish teenager turn $1 million into a $26 billion music empire while simultaneously pissing off every musician on Earth?
In the Season 5 Finale of History's Greatest Idiots, we explore the spectacular rise of Daniel Ek and Spotify, from teenage web design hustler to billionaire streaming mogul (and all the questionable decisions along the way).
This is the story of how to revolutionize an industry while underpaying the people who make it possible, one fraction of a penny at a time.
DISCLAIMER: We're hosted on Spotify's podcasting platform, so this might be career suicide. But hey, at least we'll go down with receipts!
The Teenage Hustler:
How 13-year-old Daniel Ek was already running a business building websites while you were still figuring out MSN Messenger
Why an 18-year-old millionaire enrolled in university just to dodge a massive tax bill (galaxy brain move)
The moment Daniel realized being a Ferrari-driving millionaire at 23 was... boring
Building the Piracy Killer:
How Spotify was built using illegally downloaded music to convince record labels to license their catalogues
The two-year negotiation marathon that convinced Universal, Warner, and Sony to trust a Swedish start-up
Why the name "Spotify" is actually a complete accident that they pretended was intentional
The Payment Problem:
How Spotify pays artists $0.003-0.005 per stream (that's three-to-five-tenths of ONE CENT)
Why you need 800,000 monthly streams just to earn minimum wage
The 2024 policy that stripped $47 million from small artists and gave it to Taylor Swift, Drake, and major labels
Daniel Ek's tone-deaf advice to struggling musicians: "Just put in the work and create more content" (REM's Mike Mills' response: "Go f*ck yourself")
The Joe Rogan Problem:
Spotify's $200-250 million deal with Joe Rogan (that's more than thousands of musicians earn combined)
The medical misinformation, N-word compilations, and conspiracy theories that came with it
Neil Young's ultimatum: "They can have Rogan or Young. Not both" (Spoiler: They chose Rogan)
The shocking truth about where the money came from: Tencent and Chinese government connections funding America's most controversial podcaster
Spotify genuinely changed music forever. For $10/month, you can access 100+ million songs. That's incredible! They helped kill piracy and made discovering new music easier than ever.
But somewhere along the way, they decided to:
Pay musicians fractions of pennies while spending hundreds of millions on one podcaster
Flood their platform with AI-generated garbage to avoid paying real artists
Take a cut from every stream while claiming they can't afford to pay more
To make minimum wage: Artists need 800,000 monthly streams
Joe Rogan's deal: $250 million (equivalent to 50 TRILLION artist streams)
Spotify's 2024 policy: Songs under 1,000 annual streams get ZERO royalties
Daniel Ek's net worth: $2.5 billion
Average artist per-stream payment: $0.004
Coming in Part Two:
The story gets even wilder. Military drone investments, ICE recruitment ads, Swedish tax battles, and the question everyone's asking: Is this the end of Spotify as we know it?
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Artist: Sarah Chey
https://www.fiverr.com/sarahchey
Animation: Daniel Wilson
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Music: Andrew Wilson
https://www.instagram.com/andrews_electric_sheep