Spotify Enters New Era With Founder Daniel Ek Stepping Down as CEO

Daniel Ek has run Spotify for most of his life. Now, he says he’s ready to step aside.

After two decades, the founder will move into the executive chairman role, leaving co-CEOs Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström to run the company's day-to-day.

It’s a change years in the making, and Ek had already started handing off responsibility.

Söderström is the engineer who’s spent years fine-tuning Spotify’s product, while Norström is the dealmaker behind its business and content.

"They're more than ready. They're simply executing amazingly, and now is the time for that next phase," Ek said.

The pair has already been running the kitchen as co-presidents while Ek is preparing to officially step down on January 1, 2026.

"While we bring different experiences and perspectives to the CEO role, we both have a strong bias to action and can’t wait to get started knowing that we will have Daniel’s full partnership and ongoing support,” Söderström and Norström said in a joint statement.

And the founder will still be present in his new, but less active, role.

"I'm still going to be involved in the long arc of Spotify.

So, the big strategic decisions, the big moments in the company, and help advise and guide Gustav and Alex through that journey," Ek added. 

The company is still growing, but the world around it is more crowded and complicated.

Rivals are aggressive, AI is rewriting the rules of audio, and artists are louder than ever about what they think Spotify owes them.

The Origins of a Streaming Powerhouse

Spotify launched in 2008 with a simple pitch: free streaming supported by ads or a premium tier without them.

Timing helped a lot. Smartphones were on the rise, and social media was teaching people to share everything, including music.

But by 2011, the year Spotify came to the U.S., the global recording industry was a shell of itself.

Revenues had dropped to about $15 billion, almost half of what they were a decade earlier. Spotify became a lifeline for an industry on its knees.

Now, the platform is massive. The catalog includes over 100 million songs, 7 million podcasts, and 350,000 audiobooks.

Close to 700 million people use it every month, and 276 million pay for it.

In Q2 2025, Spotify reported nearly $5 billion in total revenue, with about 70% of this amount paid to rights holders.

Ek, who once coded in Stockholm flats after dropping out of college, is now worth more than $10 billion himself.

The Challenges Ahead

Spotify may be big, but big doesn’t mean safe. In the past year alone, it cut 75 million AI-generated spam tracks.

AI is already starting to flood the pipeline, and Söderström told Forbes it could be as transformative as the smartphone once was.

Right now, about 3% of the world subscribes to Spotify, and Norström's bet is that this number could hit 10 to 15% by driving growth in Africa and Asia.

But Spotify's relations with artists remain rocky.

Payments are still a sore point, and Ek’s personal investments have stirred controversy.

His backing of Helsing, a European defense tech startup building AI-powered weapons, prompted some acts, including Massive Attack, to pull their music in protest.

The Story Spotify Wants to Tell

Ek is leaving with Spotify already financially strong, which makes the timing look deliberate rather than disruptive.

It also shows the company trying to manage how it’s perceived going forward. The details tell the story:

• Having two CEOs reflects the split at the core of Spotify: technology and product on one side, business and content on the other.
• Expanding into podcasts and audiobooks signals that the brand is adapting as audiences spread their listening across formats.
• The tension with artists is a reputational risk that Spotify still hasn’t solved, but needs to immediately address.

Leadership transitions always shape brand perception.

In this case, I think Spotify is aiming to project stability while leaving the door open to reinvention.

“Stability doesn’t mean Spotify has to slow down," David Barlev, founder and CEO of digital product agency Goji Labs, told DesignRush.

"This is a chance to experiment with new features in ways that feel relevant, not reactive. The focus should be on building tools that match how people are actually listening and creating today.”

Our Take: Can Spotify Keep Its Edge Without Ek?

I believe this is really the open question.

Ek built Spotify into a $150-billion giant and turned himself into the face of modern music streaming.

Söderström and Norström know the machinery, but cultural sharpness isn’t a line item in an earnings report. This is the harder test.

Spotify carved out its place by changing how people listen.

The challenge now for the co-CEOs is whether they can hold onto this spot as the music industry fractures:

• Podcasts are pulling attention one way
• AI-made songs are flooding in from another
• TikTok clips are slicing music into disposable seconds

And while Spotify still commands the biggest names in music, keeping them central to the platform’s story will be critical to its future.

Ek stepping back is certainly the end of an era.

He leaves a platform with nearly 700 million users and a grip on audio no one thought possible 20 years ago.

What follows will decide if Spotify can keep shaping the culture of listening, or if it slides into the background while others take the stage.

I think this is really the edge it can’t afford to lose.

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