One of the regular attacks on Spotify and other streaming music services portrays them as businesses looking to make a fast buck out of music by growing and then selling. It’s something CEO Daniel Ek has directly addressed in a new interview with Q Magazine in the UK. “First and foremost, we don’t want to sell this business, but we do have investors and at some point they’re going to want to get paid,” he says. “That might mean we become a public company. But I did this because it’s something I’m passionate about. We’re only 10% of the journey on streaming. At scale it’s a better model than there has ever been in music before.” It’s an unusually forthright statement on the company’s future, albeit not explicitly ruling out a sale – startups don’t always get what they want, after all. But Ek puts his case strongly that Spotify isn’t in it for the money. “What is important is that it’s not me who comes up with the future. I’m just a proxy for what the consumer wants. This is not a short-term scheme of making money. This is for the long run.”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…