> When Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon, and others first developed Spotify, they famously did so by building on a collection of music they did not hold any rights t

> When Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon, and others first developed Spotify, they famously did so by building on a collection of music they did not hold any rights to themselves. > Spotify used the financial model of arbitrage to obtain a cheap if not free product – digital music – and resell it in a new context to realize profit. I think this is assuming that since Spotify was prototyped with music from The Pirate Bay, it still has that model. It pays out 70%-ish of revenue to rightsholders. That's not "cheap if not free."