Daniel Ek is stepping down as CEO of Spotify two decades after he upended the music industry with his now–$145 billion streaming juggernaut.
Ek, who cofounded Spotify in 2006 in Stockholm, is not leaving the company, but rather stepping into the executive chairman role starting in January 2026 with a focus on big-picture moves and capital-allocation decisions.
The company has elevated copresidents Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström to serve as co-CEOs. Norström was previously chief business officer overseeing subscriptions and content, among other responsibilities, while Söderström was chief product and technology officer.
Ek, though, will be hard to replace. The 42-year-old tech leader has been at the helm since Spotify’s inception, when the company sought to revolutionize a music industry where iTunes dominated and music piracy via sites like LimeWire and Napster was flourishing.
“The only way to solve the problem was to create a service that was better than piracy and at the same time compensates the music industry,” Ek told The Telegraph in 2010.
After years of negotiating with record companies, Spotify launched in Sweden and other EU countries in 2008 with a significant catalog and an attractive “freemium” business model that let users listen for free with ads. It launched in the U.S. in 2011.
Spotify continued gaining popularity and went public in 2018. Its stock is up about 326% since then, and the company has a market cap of about $145 billion. In recent years, Ek oversaw the company’s efforts to expand into podcasts, which saw it ink landmark deals with Joe Rogan, Barack Obama, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The company began paring back its exclusive podcast deals in 2023.
Speaking during a live recording of the In Good Company podcast in 2024, Ek said he was “probably the least powerful person in Spotify,” thanks to its Scandinavian business model, which he said empowers other leaders. Ek said at the time that although he’s in the top position, he doesn’t necessarily have the final say for many business decisions because the Scandinavian model encourages a flat management structure. True to its roots, the company also offers generous perks such as a work-from-anywhere policy and six months of parental leave for workers regardless of their gender.
Over a decade, Spotify under Ek has grown to become a behemoth of the music industry, while also facing criticism at times for the royalties it pays artists. One of the world’s most popular artists, Taylor Swift, pulled her music from the service in 2014 over payment concerns, before returning to the service three years later. Small artists also complained about a 2024 change where Spotify stopped paying artists with fewer than 1,000 streams. The company last year said it paid out a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry.
Spotify says it currently hosts more than 100 million tracks and 7 million podcast titles for its more than 700 million global users. It reached profitability in 2024—and Ek said in a statement that he thinks the company will remain strong in the future under new leadership.
“Over the last few years, I’ve turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav—who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase,” he said.