In October 2008, the company launched its legal music streaming service, Spotify.

Lorentzon had previously worked at, and co-founded, TradeDoubler which had acquired Ek's previous company, Advertigo. The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy, and at the same time, compensate the music industry – that gave us Spotify.'Įk incorporated Spotify AB with Martin Lorentzon in Stockholm, Sweden in 2006. Laws can definitely help, but it doesn't take away the problem. Ek said he 'realized that you can never legislate away from piracy. Ek first had the idea for Spotify in 2002 when peer-to-peer music service, Napster, shut down and another illegal site, Kazaa, took over. However, after a few months, Ek realized that money was meaningless without a project he was passionate about which led to the founding of Spotify. The sale of Advertigo, as well as his previous work, made Ek wealthy enough that he decided to retire. Strigeus would later join Ek as a Spotify developer. This ended when μTorrent was sold to BitTorrent on December 7 of 2006. After selling Advertigo, Ek briefly became the CEO of μTorrent, working with μTorrent founder, Ludvig Strigeus. Advertigo was sold to TradeDoubler in 2006.

Ek later started another company, Advertigo, an online advertising company. Ek also served as CTO of the browser-based game and fashion community, Stardoll. Ek's parents started to notice his earnings once he started bringing home large TVs.Įk later served in a senior role at the Nordic auction company, Tradera, which was acquired by eBay in 2006. His earnings eventually reached $50,000 per month and by age 18 he was managing a team of 25. To help expand the business, Ek recruited students from his class to work on the websites from the school computer lab by bribing them with video games. Eventually, he started charging $5,000 per website. He charged the first client $100, but then charged the next client who asked $200. Ek graduated high school from IT-Gymnasiet in Sundbyberg in 2002, and subsequently studied engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology before dropping out to focus on his IT career.Įk's first foray into the business world began at age 13 when he started a business making websites for clients from home.

Spotify co founder