2011科技界5位最优秀人物

音乐：丹尼尔•埃克

Spotify公司CEO兼联合创始人

    数年以来，Spotify一直是最热门的音乐服务网站，但美国人却始终无缘享用。由于看好美国市场的发展前景，并且经过深思熟虑，Spotify从斯德哥尔摩远涉重洋登陆美国的旅程可谓轰轰烈烈，充满了承诺、猜测以及与唱片公司之间旷日持久的许可权谈判。Spotify终于登陆美国（7月，Spotify在美国上线），这家由丹尼尔•埃克成立的音乐流媒体服务公司已经做好准备，立意颠覆美国本土音乐爱好者音乐消费的方式，复制它在欧洲的成功。

    美国一直都不缺“自助式”音乐服务，但没有一家能像Spotify一样，提供简单、快速、合法的独立应用，使用户可以免费收听和分享1，300多万张唱片。美国音乐订阅服务商Rhapsody要求每月预付订阅费，而Spotify则使用一种免费+增值的模式。免费服务含广告，且每月可以播放音乐的时间，以及同一首歌可以收听的次数都受到限制。而最佳服务计划则可以使用户在手机上存储歌曲。Spotify利用广告销售的收入和订阅费来支付唱片公司和音乐家的费用。

    而且，埃克还创建了一种新潮的用户体验，效果甚至超过了iTunes。尽管iTunes比Spotify提供的音乐多出一百万首，但它要求用户预付费，并且在完全收听之前，必须等待下载。而埃克则相信，如果能够将整个音乐目录免费向用户开放，最终他们会被吸引进来，愿意支付订阅费。哪种方法更优秀？还得用数字来说话。截至目前，Spotify在欧洲的用户达到1，500万人，其中超过75万人为付费用户。

Music: Daniel Ek

CEO and co-founder, Spotify

    For years, Spotify was the hot music service that Americans couldn't get their hands on. Its journey across the pond from Stockholm was fueled by promises, speculation, and drawn-out licensing negotiations with record labels. Now that it's here (Spotify launched in the U.S. in July), the music streaming service founded by Daniel Ek seems poised to transform the way stateside listeners consume music, just as it did in Europe.

    "All-you-can-eat" music services have existed in the U.S for some time, but none of them work quite like Spotify, a simple, fast, and legal stand-alone application that lets users listen to and share the service's 13 million-plus tracks for free. Whereas Rhapsody requires upfront monthly paid subscriptions, Spotify uses a freemium model. The free tier is ad-supported and places caps on the number of hours that music can be streamed and the number of times a song can be listened to each month. Premium plans let users go mobile and store songs on their mobile devices. Spotify uses money from ad sales and subscription fees to compensate labels and artists.

    Ek also created a snappy user experience that outpaces even iTunes, which offers about a million more songs than Spotify but makes users pay upfront and wait for tracks to download before listening to them in full. Ek put stock in the belief that if you open up the entire music catalog to users for free, they will eventually get sufficiently hooked to pony up those subscription fees. The numbers speak for themselves. To date Spotify reaches 15 million users in Europe, more than 750,000 of whom are paying customers.