Inspired by the book “Spotify Play” — created by Sven Carlosson and Jonas Leijonhufvud — a new Netflix series will tell the story of Spotify’s rise to world domination. The six part show will focus on how the Swedish tech entrepreneur Daniel Ek and his key partners came together to revolutionise the way we consume music today.
It seems as though just yesterday we were all creating playlists on our computers and burning our favourite songs on to blank CDs. In a practical sense it was almost impossible to have a large number of songs stored on one device. Well, thank God — or Daniel Ek — for how much times have changed, as listening to your favourite artists has never been easier.
Directed by Per-Olav Sørensen and executively produced by Berna Levin, the fictional series will delve into the challenges the streaming service faced — from persuading record labels to sign up to its long-standing feud with Steve Jobs and Apple Music. It will also explore some of the well-known challenges the service has faced with popular artists from the likes of Taylor Swift, who famously removed all of her music from Spotify back in 2014 to Bob Dylan, who had his whole back catalogue removed from Spotify due to conflict around the monetisation of their musical discography.
The series will star Swedish actor Edvin Endre (who starred in Eddie the Eagle) as Spotify founder Daniel Ek, whilst Christian Hillborg (The Chamber) will play his co-founder Martin Lorentzo. Joel Lützow will play Spotify’s first employee and Ulf Stenberg (A Stranger) will play the former MD of Universal Music Sweden, Per Sudin.
Entrepreneur Daniel Ek started his career as a web designer when he was just 14 years old. In 2006, in an attempt to rid the world of piracy, he built what later became known to the world as Spotify from a small office in Stockholm. It finally launched in 2008 as an invite-only service and has amassed over 300 million monthly active users across 95 countries including an additional 158 million subscribers.
While the series is already listed on Netflix’s website, we don’t know much about it so far, except for its global premier date in 2022. But it already sounds pretty juicy. Cannot wait.