Daniel Ek

In 2024, Spotify’s “year of monetization” wasn’t great for customer wallets, but was very good for the company’s stock and CEO Daniel Ek’s personal wealth. In 2025, the music-streaming giant has continued to hold a dominant market leadership position with shares hitting an all-time high in June—pushing Spotify’s market cap past $160 billion for the first time. While Ek’s company experienced a pullback a month later after disappointing earnings, video podcasts could serve as Spotify’s next big thing with more than 350 million users having viewed one on the platform thus far.