Spotify
Swedish audio streaming service
Spotify is a Swedish freemium music streaming service provider founded in April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. As of March 2026, it was one of the largest providers of music streaming services, with over 777 million monthly active users comprising 300 million paying subscribers. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.
Spotify offers DRM-protected audio content, including over 100 million songs and over 7 million podcast titles, from record labels and media companies. Operating as a freemium service, the basic features are free with advertisements and limited control, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. Users can search for music based on artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists. It offers some social media features such as messaging, creating profiles, following friends, shared playlists, and creating listening parties called "Jams".
As of December 2022, Spotify is available in most of Europe, as well as Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, with availability in a total of 184 markets. Its users and subscribers are based largely in the United States and Europe, jointly accounting for around 53% of users and 67% of revenue. It has no presence in mainland China, where the market is dominated by QQ Music.
The public source identifies “Spotify” as swedish audio streaming service. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Spotify, Swedish and audio.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Spotify”, the useful work is to connect “swedish audio streaming service” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q689141. VIAF identifies the subject as 968162301478020270009. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2026 and 2022.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Spotify”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Spotify primary sources, Spotify archive and Spotify research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Spotify” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.