Spotify CEO rubbishes cannibalisation claims

Spotify CEO rubbishes cannibalization claims

3 March 2010 12:35 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Spotify's CEO, Daniel Ek, has taken to the stage at a Financial Times conference in London and told the audience that his company is most resolutely not killing music.

The charge has been levelled at the service, which offers free streaming in exchange for the listener being forced to sit through advertising, repeatedly of late - not least by one of its major suppliers, Warner Music. Ek said that these claims were rubbish.

"What a lot of people in the music industry talk about is cannibalisation – getting the most profitable customers to become free users. That obviously doesn’t work. But we are convinced and seeing a lot of research that actually we are doing the opposite: we are taking pirates and moving them into a legal service", he said.

He added that labels are beginning to see the results - "We are already one of the biggest accounts for many of the labels. At the growth rates we are having now, we are probably going to be one of the top four accounts globally for many of the record labels". That certainly seems to be borne out by recent results from Universal, at the very least.

Via: musically.com

Full tags

Software, Music, Spotify, Daniel Ek, Music streaming, Biz