The Spotify founder celebrated the streaming service's millionth paying subscriber this year – but can it beat iTunes?
Job: co-founder and chief executive, Spotify
Age: 28
Industry: digital media
Staff: 250
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Daniel Ek was ahead of the curve with Spotify, the online jukebox that announced its millionth paying subscriber this year.
Now Amazon and Google have come up with their own cloud-based music services, with Apple's iCloud launching in the autumn, five years after Ek introduced Spotify with fellow Swedish entrepreneur Martin Lorentzon in 2006.
A new investment round led by the Facebook investor Digital Sky Technologies valued the business at about $1bn – and that was before its long-awaited launch in the US
Based in London and Stockholm, Spotify currently has some 10 million users in Europe, able to listen to more than 8m songs for free – recently capped at a maximum of 10 hours a month. The unlimited, advert-free version costs £9.99 a month.
As our judges noted: "We are moving to a world where people are going to pay subscriptions and access music in the cloud".
Ek knows all about startups, having founded his first company when he was aged just 14 and cutting his teeth at Stardoll, a social networking site aimed at teenage girls.
One influential business news site has claimed Spotify will "crush" iTunes now it has launched in the US. But not if Steve Jobs crushes Spotify first.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/24/daniel-ek-mediaguardian-100-2011
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