he’s reached. “You’re not supposed
to be a billionaire in your thirties,”
he tells me. (“In Sweden, there’s an
inherent tension for anyone who is
ambitious,” explains Wallach, who
calls Ek a good friend. “How do you
do great things without sticking
your head up too high?”)
As the dark deepens and the
snow swirls on Skeppsholmen, I
ask Ek about his wedding, on Lake
Como in northern Italy, two summers ago, which was officiated by
the comedian Chris Rock. It seems
incongruous that someone who
has avoided the limelight would
want a superstar at the center of his
private celebration. “My wife and I
were discussing what kind of wedding we wanted,” he explains, “and
we said, ‘The whole ceremony part,
it’s kinda boring.’” They’d heard
about another wedding where the
priest inadvertently misspoke a line,
which got everyone laughing. “I was
like, ‘That’s what a wedding should
be,’ ” Ek goes on, “and we said, ‘Okay,
what would our dream be?’ ” They
were both fans of Rock, who happened to be friends with Spotify
investor and talent manager Guy
Oseary. (When I ask Rock about the
experience, he says, “Well, I got
to meet Mark Zuckerberg, so that
was cool.”)
As for the wedding band, Ek
explains, “I think the greatest entertainer right now is Bruno Mars,
and I’m like, ‘ Well, why don’t we ask
him?’ ” So the most important person in music did, and the industry’s
biggest showman, with tens of millions of monthly listeners on Spotify,
was, for one day, the most famous
wedding singer in the world. Ek still
sounds surprised that he pulled it off.
Ek pauses momentarily during our
walk and looks out over the water.
“You can hear a little bit of the city,”
he says, the vague echo of Stockholm’s traffic in the distance. “But
it’s a totally different atmosphere
here”—only 20 minutes or so from
the office—“and you can sit for hours
and just think.” Ek walks this path
often, and if he’s not alone, he says,
he’s usually one-on-one with one of
his lead reports. “Getting to the right
decision is inversely correlated to
how many
It’s a typically dark, cold, and snowy February evening in Stockholm, and Ek and I are
strolling along a slushy path around Skeppsholmen, one of the city’s islands. He is wearing white sneakers, which he earlier told me were a gift from Nike executive Heidi O’Neill,
who joined Spotify’s board a few months ago. (“She said they’re worth $3,000,” he’d mentioned, which I can’t help recalling as we slog through mud and ice.)
On the way, he acts as a tour guide to both the city and his own life. “That boat is
like one I used to work on in the summer, helping my uncle as a ticket taker,” Ek says,
pointing across the water at a ferry that transports seaside revelers in warmer months
but now serves commuters. He explains that he grew up 30 minutes south of here, in a
working-class housing project known back then for its vigorous illegal drug trade. He’s
the child of a single mother who married his stepfather when he was a toddler. (Ek only
engages with his biological father once a year, when he receives a birthday greeting, he
says.) He began playing guitar at age 4, as part of a free community instruction program.
He got his first computer not long afterward, and his interests have vacillated between
music and technology ever since. He also played on
his neighborhood’s club soccer team, but as with
music, he ultimately concluded that he had neither
the passion nor the skill to distinguish himself on the
field. “I wasn’t the best musician, or the best soccer
player. For a time, I thought I could be the best programmer, but it turned out that wasn’t true either.”
What he had was a gift for entrepreneurship. In
high school, Ek began designing websites for businesses, at a fraction of the cost other firms charged.
He recruited friends and classmates to expand his services, ended up launching several other businesses,
and eventually sold all of them when he was 22 for
enough money to reach the financial goals he’d set for
himself by 40. He still seems mystified by the heights (Continued on page 94)
Singer-songwriter James
Bay’s Spotify Session,
the company’s original-
recordings series, is
the most popular one since
2015, topping the likes
of Tom Petty, Meghan
Trainor, and Alicia Keys.
NICK
HOLMSTÉN
Global head of editorial
programming
Employee since 2013
FIRS T ALBUM The Eagles’
Hotel California
FIRS T CONCER T
Peter Gabriel
FIRS T MUSIC BUSINESS
JOB S “After a couple of
bands, I ended up as
a songwriter and producer for 10 years.”
SPO TIF Y CLAIM TO FAME
Holmstén’s startup,
Tunigo, introduced the
idea of contextual
playlists to the service,
such as “intense studying” and “confidence
boost.” Their popularity
inspired Spotify to
acquire his company.
AR TIS T HE’S LIS TENING
TO ON REPEAT Post Malone
THE
MOOD ELEVATOR
#1