Eight Things We Learned from Spotify CEO's Quora Q&A

Daniel Ek, the CEO and founder of Spotify, did an online Q&A yesterday on the dedicated question-and-answer site, Quora. The boss of the music streaming service fielded questions about whether he's worried about will happen to music streaming services, what he does all day, and what he thinks the future holds for Spotify.

Here are nine things we learned from Ek's Q&A.

Ek said his job is to "troubleshoot and fix broken stuff high and low in the business while at the same time looking ahead and editing our vision so it gives our team the right context they need to execute." He said he goes from meeting up with a rockstar one day, to reviewing seating plans for his employees the next.

"Don't think we ever made a thing about that. Now that I think about it, it's a pretty big bummer we didn't!!"

As THUMP reported, SoundCloud's finances are in a precarious position and Pandora has been shopping around for potential buyers. This doesn't worry Ek. He said the business models are very different and Spotify is able to rely on predictable revenues from its subscription service. He said: "We feel comfortable investing in new markets, investing in our product and our content, because we know we have a robust, growing business model behind us."

"It's our responsibility to make sure that artists—and songwriters and producers and everyone else in music—understands that we are in this together with them, and that we are committed to their success," he said.

But after taking the time to start four companies, he said he has "horrible code these days."

"Our habits and moments are what define our listening more than anything else. People want one kind of music when they're getting ready to go out on the weekend, another for dinner at home, something else for working out, sleeping, and so on. And this 'breaking down' of genre barriers opens up the way to much better, more interesting and more relevant programming - and music discovery."

"The easiest way today is to convince people to put it in their playlists and share it if they like it. Both of those channels are massive and they can lead to to more promotion through our viral chart, through Discover Weekly, to being featured as a new release, etc. Spotify is a democratic system in the sense that if people really like it, and the 'vital signs' as we call them are good, then the system will figure it out and spread the word."

Ek said the vision for the future is for Spotify to bring music to more moments in people's lives, especially the counterintuitive ones. He used sleep as an example. Ek said: "Millions of people every day (or night!) now go to sleep listening to Spotify. This is a behavior that is brand new for a huge chunk of that same audience. So as we think about Spotify in the future, it's really all about bringing music (and other media) to more moments in your life."