Topic
18 facts from 4 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2012
Daniel Ek believes that at Facebook's IPO the hardware cost to onboard each user was about a dollar, and says it would likely be far higher for a social network today.
“I believe at the time of Facebook's IPO, it was something like the cost for Facebook to onboard a user was like a dollar a user or something like that in like hardware cost”
2017
Dara said Daniel Ek raised the Uber CEO job with him at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference.
“I was at the Sun Valley Conference, the Allen and Company Sun Valley Conference, and having drinks with Daniel Ek.”
2022
Daniel Ek says Spotify became the podcast market leader in most markets by 2022, after entering podcasting in 2019.
“in 2022, we were pretty much the market leader in most markets around the world.”
2023
The Acquired hosts spent three days in Stockholm in May 2023 to interview Daniel Ek at Spotify.
“I mean, we had three beautiful days in May in Stockholm.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says music labels in Germany began uploading audiobooks to Spotify because they owned audiobook rights, which showed that people would consume non-music content there.
“in Germany, unbeknownst to us, but one of the sort of crazy things that ended up happening was just people started uploading audiobooks because it turns out that these music labels actually own a bunch of audiobook rights.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Spotify believes audiobooks can grow from tens of millions of listeners today to hundreds of millions.
“Hundreds of millions of people who are actually listening to audiobooks because the content is great rather than today what's tens of millions of people.”
Undated
Daniel Ek recalls that Facebook (now Meta) once had over 100,000 content moderators, and uses it to show that moderation adds large variable costs.
“at one point in time Facebook or now Meta had over 100,000 content moderators actually working for them.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says that in Spotify's early days a person needed to have heard about the service from about eight sources before signing up.
“in early Spotify, we had eight people needed to have heard about Spotify before we were able to sign someone up.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Spotify's early US marketing concentrated on college cities, where music is a big part of consumers' lives.
“So much of our early marketing efforts were in college cities in the US.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Spotify would not have survived if it had not been unable to launch first in the United States, which forced it to start in smaller European markets.
“I can tell you definitively, Spotify would not have been alive today had it not been that we couldn't launch in the US as our first market.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Taylor Swift's songwriting circle is two to four people at the top, while some Korean artists involve about 200 writers.
“Just on the songwriting side, it's the difference between if in Taylor Swift's camp, it's like two, three, four, maybe at the top. In some Koreans, it's 200 writers involved.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says he used ChatGPT to set up a coding environment in a few hours after about ten years away from coding.
“And I asked ChatGPT to help me. And pretty much on a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, I was up and running.”
Undated
Daniel Ek argues that after Instagram arrived, prices for fine art photography rose, which he uses to predict that top-quality work gains value when creation becomes easy.
“Photography being the sort of key reference point. When Instagram came, oh, no, no one's going to want photography. But price of fine art photography actually increased, not decreased.”
Undated
Daniel Ek cites MrBeast's Spanish-language channel, which he says has 15 to 20% additional subscribers beyond the English channel, as an example of translating content for new audiences.
“You know, I don't know if you guys seen, seen this, but like Mr. Beast has like a Spanish language channel.”
Undated
Daniel Ek describes Spotify's exponential growth as many different linear growth curves stacked on top of each other.
“if you think about an exponential curve, if you really zoom in on that exponential curve, it actually is like a lot of different linear curves stacked on top of each other that creates that kind of exponential curve.”
Undated
A host recalls that at Spotify's StreamOn event, Daniel Ek publicly said Spotify's audiobooks offering was not yet great.
“You said this about audiobooks at StreamOn. You got on stage to the public and said, we have audiobooks. I don't think it's great right now.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Spotify's AI DJ is probably one of the most popular AI products by reach and that Spotify doesn't heavily promote it.
“Probably one of the most popular AI products out there now in terms of reach. We don't really tout it all that much.”
Undated
Daniel Ek says Spotify's feature showing what friends are listening to, built with Facebook, has existed for about 13 years.
“It's one of our more popular legacy features that's been around now for like 13 years.”
Episodes