"Lorentzon and Ek were in a unique place: The former no longer needed the money, and the latter no longer cared about it. So they decided to ignore the dollars

"Lorentzon and Ek were in a unique place: The former no longer needed the money, and the latter no longer cared about it. So they decided to ignore the dollars and aim for disruption." This is the crux of why this whole thing ultimately won't work, in my humble opinion. The folks in charge of licensing Ek his product still care very much about money, and as long as he has to license his product from them they are going to charge a completely unsustainable rate. Rather than focusing on creating a platform for developers to make cool applications with Spotify, Ek should be focusing on creating a platform for musicians to get their businesses together without record labels.