The Playlist follows the tumultuous story behind the rise of the music streaming platform Spotify, tracing how Spotify stopped piracy and revolutionized the music industry forever.
The Playlist features Edvin Endre, Ulf Stenberg, Gizem Erdogan, Joel Lutzow, Christian Hillborg, and Janice Kavander playing major roles. Based on the novel Spotify Untold, The Playlist is a dramatization of the story behind how Spotify became the streaming giant that it is.
The Playlist Story Summary
Daniel Ek (Edvin Endre), an ambitious techie of 22, works at Tradera. Upon being rejected by Google for not being qualified enough, he hacks Google and figures out its algorithm. He realizes that he has to follow his own heart and create something huge and quits his job.
Daniel Ek comes in contact with Martin Lorentzon who agrees to fund him if he comes up with a good business idea and would gladly be on board with it.
The 2000s is the time when the music industry was struggling to uphold itself amid the rising concerns around Pirate Bay, an online website where music can be downloaded for free. Pirate Bay appealed to the younger generation as the youngsters did not have to buy expensive CDs.
Daniel Ek has a strong belief that everything can be digitized. Upon getting insights about musicians, from his childhood friend Bobby T who is a musician herself, he creates a vision of establishing a free music streaming platform. He figures out that the younger generation is drawn towards Pirate Bay because they could download any song they wished to listen to for free despite it being illegal.
Martin agrees to fund Daniel’s idea of making a legal and free music streaming service. He plays his part well by pulling in investors to Spotify. However, Martin has a different way of working which doesn’t sit well with Daniel on a few occasions.
Andreas Ehn, a brilliant coder comes to strongly believe in Daniel Ek’s vision when Daniel is just beginning his journey of turning Spotify into the go-to music streaming service for the younger generation. Andreas picks his team of coders that aims to be the world’s best coders. They agree on making Spotify the best free and fast streaming service.
While coding, Andreas Ehn encounters problems with the lag in streaming music and servers. Through breaking the fourth wall, Andreas explains to the viewers the difficulties of building p2p networks as using servers is no longer an option. Daniel Ek isn’t satisfied. He wants no lag between the click and the play of music. He wants a flawless music streaming service.
Despite the challenges, Andreas figures a way out and builds a unique network protocol that breaks the rules of the internet and builds quality and fast streaming service.
Daniel approaches Per Sunden, the CEO of Sony Music in Sweden, but experiences rejection multiple times. Per Sunden strongly believes that free music technology isn’t going to do any good. He is frustrated and finds it hard to come to terms with the present reality of the digitization of music and hates music being free. The popularity of Pirate Bay causes drops in sales of CDs and his company has to lay off a lot of employees.
Per Sunden files a lawsuit against the creators of Pirate Bay. This move soon backfires as the number of users of Pirate Bay increases as they get more publicity. He approaches Pirate Bay creators and attempts to negotiate a deal. The creator of Pirate Bay refuses to budge.
Andreas doesn’t like the fact that music won’t be free at Spotify if Daniel strikes a deal with the record companies. This is when Andreas realizes that the dynamic at Spotify changed. Ludwig Strigeus, another coder joins the team of coders at Spotify. Despite Andreas not agreeing to get record companies involved with Spotify, Daniel and Martin want to get music rights from record companies to make their business profitable.
Upon getting convinced by his assistant, Per Sunden finally agrees to hear out what Daniel Ek has to say about Spotify. He is pleasantly surprised with how good Spotify is as a free music streaming service.
Free illegal streaming services face legal troubles from record companies. The task of finding a middle ground between the two gets difficult. Spotify hires a lawyer, Petra, to deal with legal issues. She faces some challenges as she tries to make Daniel compromise with the record companies.
She manages to get Daniel to agree to the record companies getting a 15% ownership of Spotify. She owns up to the part she played in the process and doesn’t care about the negative opinions about Spotify.
Andreas is one of the people who hold Petra responsible for compromising his ideologies by striking negotiations with the record labels. He realizes that he is disposable at a celebration party between Spotify and record companies. He walks out of the team.
In 2016, at Daniel’s wedding party, Martin steps down from the role as a partner at Spotify. Daniel thinks that the presence of Martin and his ways of working will complicate matters in their business. Daniel and Martin mutually part ways as business partners.
The Playlist Ending Explained
While Spotify was growing, Bobby T’s songs helped her gain popularity initially on Pirate Bay and then on Spotify. She is also approached by Per Sunden to sign a deal with Sony in Sweden.
Most of the money from her music benefits the record company, the Pirate Bay, and Spotify. She doesn’t get enough revenue through any of the platforms. She does get exposure on these platforms through downloads, likes, and shares. Gradually, she is forgotten when it comes to revenue like most musicians who don’t belong to the top tier.
Fast forward to 2024, Bobby T is struggling to make ends meet by taking up several gigs. Though her music is getting streamed on Spotify, the money isn’t enough. There is a string of protests that happen against Spotify for not giving enough revenue to the musicians by creating a business that thrives on exploiting the artists.
Daniel likes one of Bobby T’s songs on Spotify and adds it to his playlist. This makes Bobby T finally snap and upload a video voicing her concerns regarding Spotify, addressing Daniel directly. She says that if he likes her songs, they should meet and communicate the real concerns that musicians are facing. The video grabs social attention and Bobby T becomes the representative for the protest which trends as “scratch the record”.
Daniel is torn when he sees his childhood friends’ perspective on the video. He faces the challenges emerging due to the protests. He is disturbed but decides not to sell Spotify. Instead, he decides to add a feature “Discovery Plus” as a way to increase revenue.
Does Spotify Do Justice To The Musicians?
Daniel claimed to change the musicians’ plight when he started his journey with Spotify. The vision was for the musicians to have a platform from where they could earn decent revenue to pay their bills.
These promises are addressed at the court as Daniel and Bobby T answer questions by the US Senate. The top-tier musicians are the only ones who can generate decent revenue from Spotify while the other musicians aren’t able to.
The US Senate calls Spotify a monopoly. Spotify controls most of the music industry now and musicians can’t just walk away from Spotify. Bobby says that Spotify employees make a lot more money than the artists whose songs, despite getting a lot of plays, make very less revenue out of Spotify.
Daniel’s confidence gets shaken when he hears Bobby’s side of the argument. However, he regains some strength as he gets a loan from the bank, allowing him the option of not selling Spotify.
Bobby and Daniel stand face to face. Daniel tells Bobby that he regrets one thing- during the first talks of negotiations with the record companies, he should have said that Spotify is the future and if they want to be a part of it, it has to be on his terms. Bobby asks him if everything would have turned out better if he had stopped listening to others to which Daniel agrees. Hearing this, Bobby walks away.
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