Then you look at radio and the entire US radio industry in 2017 or 2018, on just the ad side, was $18 billion - that’s larger than the entire streaming for the music industry.” The Spotify boss then encouraged the record industry to fantasize about what will happen to this mighty advertising haul when AM/FM’s remaining audience dump traditional radio, and transfer instead to “a legal environment being monetized for the music industry” - a.k.a. Yet the similarity between Muller’s argument four years ago and Ek’s now - via an interview the Spotify boss gave to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on May 5th - is striking.Įk said last week: “When I look at all of the paid subscriptions combined today, the IFPI has that number at, call it, $12 billion. They were in fact written by Christophe Muller, YouTube’s Global Head of Music Partnerships, in an op-ed posted in April 2016. According to Ek, the record industry should stop obsessing over paid streaming subscriptions and instead pay more mind to the opportunity presented if a billion people, currently listening to linear radio worldwide, started listening to Spotify instead.Ĭards on the table: Daniel Ek didn’t actually say the words above. Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek is making that argument in the wake of his company’s Q1 earnings announcement.

“If the ad revenue currently spent on radio instead flowed to online platforms, it would double the current size of the music business.”

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