You can't beat piracy by fighting it. You beat it by offering something better. We made it easier to listen legally than to steal. That was the whole strategy.
Spotify lost money for 18 years. Eighteen. Every year people said the model was broken. We knew it wasn't — it just needed scale. Patience is the most underrated startup strategy.
I was coding at 8, running a web business at 14, and had 25 employees in high school. My parents had no idea what I was doing. Neither did I, honestly. I just knew I wanted to build things.
Record labels told me streaming would destroy the music industry. Global music revenue has more than doubled since Spotify launched. We didn't destroy the industry. We saved it from piracy.
The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.