Spotify’s Daniel Ek at LeWeb: Two and a Half Million Paying Users, No Plans for an IPO Yet. Spotify founder Daniel Ek joined LeWeb founder and host Loic Le Meur on stage in Paris earlier today to talk about the state of Spotify. The discussion focused on a wide range of topics, ranging from Spotify’s new platform, the company’s relationship with Facebook and why it took the company so long to launch in the United States.
Spotify also announced a new radio app for Spotify that was built by the company’s team in New York. The new radio app in Spotify allows users to skip unlimited songs, something Pandora doesn’t allow its users, of course. The new “Artist Radio” experience brings Spotify on par with services like MOG, which have long offered a radio experience. For Spotify, which always focused strongly on playlists, this is quite a bit of a departure from its regular user experience. Ek also announced that Spotify now has two and a half million paying users, most of which pay around 10 Euro per month.
Spotify’s Origins Ek’s Advice for Entrepreneurs. Goes LeWeb. For two years now, I’ve attended LeWeb in Paris in December and this week will mark my third trip to Loic and Geraldine Le Meur’s annual event. Every year, over 3,000 people come together to see some of the most important Internet entrepreneurs from the U.S. and Europe on stage at LeWeb. The conference may not be the cheapest or easiest to get to, but I can’t really think of any similar event that is organized more professionally than this one and attracts a higher quality of participants. As an “official blogger” at the conference this year, I will make LeWeb the main topic on this site for the next few days.
For the first time ever, the conference is scheduled to run for three days instead of two. The conference runs from Wednesday to Friday and thanks to the time difference between Europe and the U.S. chances are most of the news will have already happened by the time you wake up if you are in the U.S.