Sophia Bendz, Global Director of Marketing, Spotify.
Spotify – A New Tune in the Music Industry
ABBA. Roxette. Ace of Base. The Hives. And now Swedish House Mafia. The music industry in Sweden has been a successful worldwide story. That music from a small country in Northern Europe has been able to cross so many cultural boundaries across the world is in many ways astonishing and worth noticing. However it was a different Swedish phenomena that brought something new to the music industry that would change the view of the industry completely, something that was just a few years ago not possible – that phenomena is the company Spotify. By using a cloud based library of music that customers can connect to by downloading the Spotify software program from the website the customer is no longer limited to a storage amount of a CD nor someone else’s music taste put together on a CD. This creates a world where the customer, the listener, can create his own music lists depending on his taste in music and without limitations as to amount of storage. The possibility of carrying the music with you wherever you go also allows the customer to be movable but still listen to his or her favorite music. The company was founded in Sweden by David Ek and Martin Lorentzon and has now expanded into several European countries such as Denmark, Germany and England. Latest on the list of countries that is embracing the Spotify culture is the United States. After a few years of legal debates with record companies the deal was finally set, and in 2011 Spotify was launched in the U.S. with its headquarter based in New York City. In the following interview Sophia Bendz, Global Director of Marketing, tells us more about the success story of Spotify. Sophia grew up in Stockholm, she started working with Spotify in 2007 and today she is positioned at the North American headquarter in New York City as the Global Marketing Manager but travels a lot between London, Stockholm and New York City.
Q: Can you describe Spotify briefly, the company story
and why customers should use it?
A: Spotify was founded by Daniel Ek and Martin
Lorentzon in Sweden 2006 and the mission was to provide all the worlds music to everyone for free. This was happening at the same time as people were downloading music illegally more than ever and we wanted to provide an alternative to piracy. We also recognized the change in consumer behavior and therefore we created a service that provides access to all the world’s music for free.
Q: Do you think that the Swedish heritage of the com-
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