Daniel Ek Quotes

There's no doubt that the ready availability of music online has created a thousand more opportunities than it's destroyed.

If you can use a search engine, you can find any piece of music that's been recorded for free. I'm not saying that's right, but it's a fact, and I'm surprised that more people don't accept or acknowledge that and try to adapt in some way.

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.

The fact of the matter is that 40 years ago, unless you bought the record, you couldn't hear the music. It was such a narrow track in comparison to today.

The big news already broke. The file-sharing and all that stuff, it's a done deal. And I think figuring out how to make that a fair exchange for the people that make music is still an issue.

People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.

I guess I'm not saying that I think music should be free, but I do think that if people can get it for free, there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. It's kind of a waste of energy to try and force them to pay for it if they don't have to.

From the artist's standpoint, are you getting more from streaming than you used to, prior to the days of the Internet? No - and I don't know if those days are ever going to come back - but at least, technically speaking, it's the legal way to do it.

Downloading a song for free is the easiest way to get all kinds of music. Everything else is tough and I am sure, even if people wanted to buy music, they won't be able to because they will not understand the way to buy music online. It is a very complicated process.

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

I think music sharing of any kind is great.

You have an entire generation of kids who grew up with the idea that music is something that you can download for free.

Napster has pointed the way for a new direction for music distribution, and we believe it will form the basis of important and exciting new business models for the future of the music industry.

Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.

Gone are the days when you'd have to tune in to a mad illegal radio station late at night to be able to hear the rapper of your choice. That's all changed now. That's all gone out of the window. And I feel like I represent that change. I represent the era of iPods and Shuffle and things like that.

Obviously, I want it to be legally downloaded, and I myself have spent a fortune on iTunes because, for me, that's the easiest way to get music.

It's made music more accessible with YouTube and the ability to trade audio files. But it hasn't made it more popular.

I do not believe that people should steal music, but I think that fans need a better alternative, hence why I am such a fan of Apple, where you can simply buy a song for $0.99; it is very easy, it is a value-packed service... and this is a result of the shakeup... something has to happen in the music industry.

I realised that you can never legislate away from piracy. Laws can definitely help, but it doesn't take away the problem. The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry - that gave us Spotify.

Music files and downloading have indeed changed the currency of music to a great degree.

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

There are those who say the music industry must adapt to a wired world. They point to the decades-long rise in CD prices, even as manufacturing costs came down, and to data that shows Napster may actually increase sales of CDs by music-hungry customers as evidence that the music industry is simply afraid of a new technology.

There's a lot of people out there - like, a lot of people out there - that wouldn't know our music if it wasn't for Spotify.

I think streaming, in general, is democratising music in general.

When you listen to music through Spotify, you don't own the song, even though you might be able to listen to it at any time.