Spotify Founder: "Your Music Taste Tells Us The Books You NEED" - Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek 0:00 I think it's, like, very important to pick things you're passionate about and curious about, but then ultimately how successful you are as an entrepreneur is in your ability to make high quality decisions.

Ali Abdaal 0:12 This episode is very exciting, at least for me, because this is a conversation between me and Daniel Ek, who is the co-founder and CEO of Spotify, and we're here because of an exciting new announcement that they've just unveiled at an event last night, and that is all about audiobooks. So basically, audiobooks are now coming to Spotify. In this conversation, me and my new pal Daniel talk about a bunch of interesting things. Firstly, we talk about what this audiobooks feature means for the industry at large and how it's gonna affect publishers and authors and of course, readers and listeners. Secondly, we talk about Daniel's approach to building businesses, and Daniel talks about the frameworks that entrepreneurs can use to think about how they add value, and we talk about the balance between thinking and action, and Daniel shares some interesting and somewhat counterintuitive thoughts on what most entrepreneurs do wrong.

Daniel Ek 0:49 I'm interested in solving, like many other entrepreneurs, big problems for people. I'm not so interested in creating, you know, a gimmicky thing that people may find some amusement in, but next week move on to something else. I would look for a problem where it pays off to be faster.

Ali Abdaal 1:05 And we talk about time management, we talk about focus, and we talk about work-life balance as it relates to the fact that Daniel's obviously running this huge company and a couple of other companies as well, and is also balancing his life as a father and a husband.

Daniel Ek 1:15 I do what I love to do. So I have a lot of fun while doing it. I don't live to work, but I really enjoy what I do too, so it doesn't feel like a huge drag. If you shoot for the stars and you land on the moon, you might just as well tackle something that's really hard, because if you tackle something that's really hard, it's more likely that you create a lot of value than if you tackle something that's simple.

Ali Abdaal 1:36 Daniel, welcome to the podcast.

Daniel Ek 1:37 Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Ali Abdaal 1:38 Thank you so much for having us here. This is an exciting time for you guys.

Daniel Ek 1:41 Yeah. Uh, well, thank you so much for coming, uh, here to New York. Uh, I feel honored.

Ali Abdaal 1:46 Yeah, mate. First time in New York. Like, it was, it was incredible that you guys invited us out here. Um, so you guys have recently announced the audiobook thing. For people who might not have heard of what this is, can you, can you give us a rundown of what does this mean for listeners?

Daniel Ek 1:58 Yeah, sure. Um, so, so the basis of what we announced is starting yesterday, um, um, audiobooks, uh, well, actually all Spotify Premium users in UK and Australia now have audiobooks as part of their package. So they get 15 hours, uh, worth of listening as part of their, uh, subscription from a library of more than 150,000 titles to choose from. So y- you'll have an amazing set of, of, of, uh, titles that you'll be able to listen to as part of your Spotify Premium subscription. And then in addition to that, you can obviously top up for more h- hours if you'd like it, or purchase books on an à la carte basis just like you could before.

Ali Abdaal 2:39 Yeah, I think it's gonna be, it's gonna be incredible. Like I've, I've just got access to it on my Spotify app, 'cause obviously it's UK based.

Daniel Ek 2:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:46 And just the, the speed at which I can now sample audiobooks-

Daniel Ek 2:49 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:49 ... is great, 'cause I don't need to worry about like a credit system where it's like-

Daniel Ek 2:53 Exactly right

Ali Abdaal 2:54 ... a limited number of things per month and, and all that kind of stuff.

Daniel Ek 2:56 Yeah, exactly right. And, and, um, I, I think what's gonna happen is, um, like you said, people are going to now take the bet on authors that they might have not otherwise done just because they're curious and interested. Uh, and a big problem with the previous credit model was you kind of had one shot, and so you're more likely to take the things you know you like, um, and, and do that rather than bet on anything new. So the thing that probably excites me the most is just going to be seeing how consumption is going to be different and what kind of authors might do well in this world. Uh, and inversely also, there may be some authors that don't do as well, uh, as they normally would.

Ali Abdaal 3:35 Hmm. So breaking into audiobooks, like it's a pretty old school system, legacy providers, very in-- like publishing, the publishing industry in general is quite like entrenched with like the big five publishers. How did you guys go about kind of-

Daniel Ek 3:52 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 3:52 ... becoming an entrant to this market and I guess becoming the first viable competitor to Audible?

Daniel Ek 3:57 Yeah. Well, I, I, I think, um, our DNA is a little bit different in that, um, we started out respecting copyright and working with partners. Uh, there's a lot of tech companies that tend to take the approach, build a platform, and then whatever comes, comes, and then eventually you get to a certain size where you kind of need to codify it and start adapting to the existing industries. We kinda take this approach, uh, the inverse approach, where we don't mind going into something where you may even have a few big players. You work within the system to try to change it. So, um, you know, a lot of people talk about disruption. I, I dislike the word because it typically kind of implies that you're, uh, wrecking the havoc on what's already there. And, uh, just like we did in music, we actually like working with the ecosystem, try to see if there's a win-win outcome where creators win and consumers win at the same time. So I think we took the same mindset that we had in music, um, beforehand and applied it to audiobooks and said, "We understand your problems," and we spent the better part of two years just trying to understand what their issues were fundamentally before we introduced a model. And the big realization was like, just like in music, uh, there was one dominating player, uh, that was there before, and it was kind of stagnant in the innovation. And just like in music, uh, it was actually quite small number of people that were in this legal environment from where we thought, uh, the world should look like. Uh, if I look at Germany as a great example, you know, in Germany, um, the book market is about half audiobooks and half, uh, physical books, and the same has now happened in Sweden. Um, so if you think about that, um, you know, I think the number right now is about 5% in the US and probably, I would guess, I, I don't know the numbers, but probably similar, 5 to 10% in the UK. So that means that audiobooks is massively under penetrated, uh, and we'd need to bring innovation in order to do so. So by making this part of all Spotify members, we bring two things, uh, to bear. One is we bring scale straight away, which makes this exciting for publishers. And two, you, uh, are introducing a whole new generation that perhaps may not purchase a separate audiobook subscription, but now that this is part of their existing, uh, audio service already, they get both better consumption experience and, uh, are more likely to try new things as well.

Ali Abdaal 6:23 Sick. Yeah, I, I can't, I can't wait to try this out and just sample tons and tons of audiobooks. Um, a general question about, uh, but, you know, when, when it comes to business entrepreneurship, obviously Spotify has been quite, you know, to use that word, disruptive, uh, when it comes to, for example, the music industry. But there are a lot of businesses that, you know, if, if someone had the idea of, you know, even something like Stripe-

Daniel Ek 6:44 Mm

Ali Abdaal 6:44 ... where it's like, "Hey, let's do payments," or something like that.

Daniel Ek 6:47 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 6:48 And you... And then they think, [sighs] "There's, there's gonna involve a lot of deal-making, a lot of talking to people-

Daniel Ek 6:52 Mm

Ali Abdaal 6:52 ... a lot of trying to convince-

Daniel Ek 6:54 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 6:54 ... existing providers that this is a good idea," compared

Ali Abdaal 6:58 to doing something that doesn't require any of that.

Daniel Ek 7:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:00 You know, music, audiobooks, payments, these are all, like, hard problems because you're having to do a lot beyond just whip up a few bits of code-

Daniel Ek 7:07 Sure

Ali Abdaal 7:07 ... which is I guess how a lot of people think of software start-ups these days.

Daniel Ek 7:10 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:11 How... Or if you were advising new entrepreneurs who are looking at opportunities that seem hard versus opportunities that seem less hard-

Daniel Ek 7:19 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 7:19 ... how, how would you go about kind of tackling that?

Daniel Ek 7:21 Well, m- m- so, so I think that there's two things that are important to state. Whether you only have to do, um, a little bit of code or whether you have to do a lot of work, the first thing is to try to understand how do you create value and for whom. Um, and so in a lot of cases, what I notice is that, uh, if it is very easy to go about something, um, it is easy to try ideas. That's the positive thing. So occasionally you may, uh, stumble upon th- something that becomes a great success. But I think we don't talk about the inverse, um, enough, which is because it's cheap, you tend to not have to think th- things through, and so many of these experiments then u- end up getting faulty and, um, you know, we talked about minimum viable project, uh, products, MVPs, and so on. I actually don't subscribe to the theory at all. I'm, I'm kind of, um, opposed to minimal viable products. Um, instead I think you should take the time to think through, uh, what problems you're solving and for whom, and I think the experiment, first experiments actually dictate subsequent experiments as well. So I, I, I would just say the first thing is to try to, like, really, no matter who you are and whether it's a big effort or small effort, um, you're gonna have to think through the problem well, and that in itself is a big exercise, no matter if, if the actual implementation then is fast or slow. And then the second thing is, um, you know, what... When I think about all the problems that are left, um, I think about the worlds in, in bits, atoms, and genes, right? And so, um, we started, all of us as internet entrepreneurs, we were solving mostly bits-only problems. But when you think about the really interesting things that are happening at the moment, they're all kind of in this interplay between bits and atoms, and in some cases, maybe bits and genes, um, with, you know, the Recursion pharmaceutical company and a bunch of all these other companies that do really interesting stuff in, in biotech. So I, I think that the most interesting opportunities are in those things that are kind of problematic anyway, where you have to master many skills. And then the last thing I would s- just say is the, the, you know, you shoot for your, for the stars and you land on the moon. I, I tend to think that it's, it, things in the end, usually, back to my first point, ends up being about the same amount of work anyway, so you might just as well tackle something that's really hard. Because if you tackle something that's really hard, it's more likely that you create a lot of value than if you tackle something that's simple. So maybe that's me post-rationalizing getting into really difficult, uh, businesses and, and, and so on, but, um, I'm interested in solving, like many other entrepreneurs, big problems for people. I'm not so interested in creating, you know, a gimmicky thing that people may find some amusement in, but next week move on to something else.

Ali Abdaal 10:06 Mm. So let's say someone's listening to this and they're a, you know, they've, they've got a normal job and they wanna start a business initially on the side, you know, and try and, try and build it up into a thing, and they might be thinking of, like, "Okay, there's this hard problem I wanna tackle, but, you know, Daniel's got his team of 10,000 plus employees, and he's got all the money and all that kind of stuff." What are some, uh, w- what are some ways that that solo entrepreneur can start thinking about tackling these hard problems?

Daniel Ek 10:35 Well, I mean, again, if you are starting to go up against a big incumbent, uh, in whatever field you're doing, um, I think the most, um, underappreciated things is, um, i- is to, to, to almost think about, you know, there's informational advantages you can have, right? There's analytical advantages you can have, and then there are behavioral advantages you can have. And I like to go after things that, where you can have be- behavioral advantages. So I would look for a problem that, where you, where, where it pays off to be faster. And, like, in a bigger company, and one of the things as by example is that you can't take the same amount of risks on the regulatory side or the legal side. But, uh, very often things that are highly disruptive, for instance, tend to be things

Daniel Ek 11:25 that are kind of in that gray zone where it's not sup- I'm not saying it's, it's illegal, but it's not clear if it's super legal either. So you have an advantage, um, as a younger company to go up against an incumbent in there. So I would just go for things where you can have some sort of behavioral advantage, where it pays off to be faster, where it pays off to be a smaller team, et cetera. But then in addition to that, the true unique thing I really do believe is if you're a high-quality individual, even if you have a job on your side in order to, um, you know, pay the rent and all the, the other stuff, if you are spending thousands of hours thinking about a problem, that is highly unique in this world. There aren't a lot of high-quality people spending thousands of hours thinking about how to solve a certain problem. You're very likely to come up with very unique solutions, and that sort of touches upon the conversation we had prior, right? About, um, sort of, you know, how to think, uh, about these things, the minimum viable thing. I think most of the work happens to be the same, no matter if it's a hard problem you're tackling or a simple one, which is really thinking th- things through. Um, you know, thinking is, uh, cheap. Um, that's the real MVP part here.

Ali Abdaal 12:37 Mm. What do you mean by informational or analytical advantages?

Daniel Ek 12:41 Well, I think of the world like, again, um, if you're a big, um, company, the r- the reality is if-- let's take Spotify as a, a great example. We have an audience of more than five hundred and fifty million users. We're naturally going to have an informational advantage around consumption behaviors relative to a new entrant. So naturally, that gives us a lot of, of opportunities. Uh, like one way we're using it in the case of audiobooks is we're looking for, uh, is your music tastes, um, a possible indicator of what kind of

Daniel Ek 13:15 books you may like? Um, you know, I don't know if it is, but maybe it is. Uh, if so, then we would have, um, certainly an advantage, uh, relative to someone who's starting, uh, fresh in, in audiobooks. So that would be an, uh, example of that. An analytical advantage would be, for some reason, you happen to sit on the fifty experts in the world, um, about this particular issue. Every PhD you kind of bought up and have them locked up in, in a locker, then you may have some sort of analytical advantage. Those are mu-much harder to kind of like, um, understand. But investors typically talk about having sort of an informational advantage or an analytical advantage. But I think the most underutilized and underappreciated of them is when you can have a behavioral advantage. You can just behave in ways that other people can't or don't want to.

Ali Abdaal 14:07 And how did that-- The-- I guess in the early days of Spotify, you guys, uh, took a very different behavioral approach compared to what other people were doing. What, what did that look like back in the day?

Daniel Ek 14:18 Um, well, I, I think, um, um, back then, um, it, it manifested-fested itself in many ways, and, and I guess it also depends relative to other people. But one of the behavioral things we were-- we were a Silicon Valley type company out of Stockholm, Sweden.

Ali Abdaal 14:35 Hmm.

Daniel Ek 14:35 Um, so relative to other European companies, we were way more Silicon Valley playbooks of, of, you know, scaling things, moving fast, technology being an enabler for various things. So against them, we did a lot of things, uh, very right. Um, against a Silicon Valley company, we were a European company, and that had certain other advantages. Uh, for instance, the talent market, uh, didn't look the same, uh, in there, so we could have our pick of the talent, so the best of the best of the best, because there wasn't many other startups around when we started out, uh, which was an enormous advantage. Another thing too was that our first initial market wasn't the US, it was Sweden. And I, I can tell you that if we had started in the US as the first market, Spotify would not be around today. But because by picking a much smaller market that everyone else thought was uninteresting, we were-- not only because we were there on the ground, we were able to see the signals, but it also didn't matter, uh, to the same extent. And the first couple of iterations of what we were building probably wouldn't have been possible to take in the biggest markets in the world and getting the record labels to buy in and say, "Hey, we're gonna risk everything. And by the way, this guy comes around, a twenty-three-year-old guy, and he's telling us to give away our music for free because then people will wanna pay for it," right?

Ali Abdaal 15:54 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Ek 15:54 Of course, they didn't wanna do that. Uh, so I probably would have then had to settle for a much worse product and proposition, whereas in Sweden, um, the market was small enough and I was able to convince them, but also promise them through guaranteeing them revenues, um, uh, for that market. So for them, it was kind of win. If Spotify loses, we still get another year's of run rate. If Spotify wins, um, this might be quite interesting.

Ali Abdaal 16:22 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Ek 16:22 So, so it really wasn't as big of a bet. But if I'd tell you from the beginning, if I come to you and say, "Hey, Ali, give me all your content for free, and by giving it away for free, we're gonna get people to pay for it, but we won't tell you n- how"-- and by, by the way, this is back in two thousand and eight.

Ali Abdaal 16:37 Yeah.

Daniel Ek 16:38 So now people are more aware of it, and no one was paying for anything on the internet back then.

Ali Abdaal 16:42 Yeah.

Daniel Ek 16:43 You probably would have laughed me out of the, the house. But because I did that, coupled with also basically saying, "Here's another year's, um, uh, pay," where y- you saw your existing business crumbling from underneath you, it's like-

Ali Abdaal 16:56 Yeah

Daniel Ek 16:57 ... "Ooh, okay, I'll, I'll try this. I don't believe it works, but at least it gives me a few more months of runway."

Ali Abdaal 17:02 Nice. Um, one thing that we, we touched upon is this sort of, um, y-you said, uh, you know, thousands of hours of thinking. Thinking is the thing that can, can give you the advantage. H-how do you think of-- You know, there are, there are a lot of people that I know that we have in our audience who are almost paralyzed by thinking about things.

Daniel Ek 17:19 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 17:19 They'll think about starting a YouTube channel for ages.

Daniel Ek 17:20 Hmm.

Ali Abdaal 17:20 They'll think about starting a podcast or writing a book-

Daniel Ek 17:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:23 ... for absolutely ages, and-

Daniel Ek 17:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:24 ... will never take action.

Daniel Ek 17:25 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:25 So how do you think about this balance between the analysis and the thinking versus actually just doing the thing?

Daniel Ek 17:30 Yeah. And, and, and you're exactly right too. So what I often tell entrepreneurs is that, um, you know, if you even start something, you're better than ninety-nine percent, um, other people, right? So, um, you know, and the-- this is why I don't like giving advice because people tend to take it literally, whereas the reality is it's the sum of many different things that you have

Daniel Ek 17:51 to do. But you're, you're exactly right. I do think you have to get started, uh, and you have to do stuff. And, and it's by being half pregnant that you kind of-- Like, the, the amount of times that I wanted to quit Spotify, but I couldn't because I felt like, um, I was half pregnant. I had a team, they were dependent on me, and I just had to power through. And it's by just pure grit that eventually we were able to overcome certain things. So, so I think that is equally true in addition to that. But I would say, um, I generally think when I meet entrepreneurs that they've underthought, um, uh, the space, the solution, uh, what value they're creating for who. And if they spend a little bit more time than that, they would have avoided some other problems that then gets very painful by learning it after the hand. So it's, it's a combination. You have to get started, like you said, and I think that's the problem for ninety-nine percent. I still To be candid, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking of this out loud now, but I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing for, for humanity. Maybe it is by default so that it, it is good that there's a certain barrier for us all to start things, um, in the beginning. Um, but you're right. It's true with exercise, it's true with most thing, um, with this world. Getting started is the hardest part.

Ali Abdaal 19:09 Yeah, I think early on in my, I guess, entrepreneur career, I very much drank the Kool-Aid of, like, just get started, just do the thing, and now that I look back on it, I think it... That attitude served me in some parts of the journey, but it hamstrung me in other parts of the journey. Actually, this morning we started our first, um, like, uh, you know, we've got a team of 13 people, so every week we've started a thing where 9:00 AM on a Wednesday morning, one hour, everyone's on Zoom, Slack is off, everyone has a pen and paper and notebook and just thinks-

Daniel Ek 19:38 Mm

Ali Abdaal 19:38 ... about their area of the business.

Daniel Ek 19:39 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 19:40 And that already for me, for everyone on the team, has already led to so many insights. 'Cause just even just taking that one hour a week to just think-

Daniel Ek 19:47 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 19:47 ... and nothing else is so rare in a world where there's constantly stuff to do.

Daniel Ek 19:51 Yeah. No, I think you're right. Like, this constant interruption, um, is a real issue, and psychologically, um, we're, we're ill-equipped to deal with it. So I think, um, that's certainly true. By the way, the, the... One of my board members posted something you might be interested in. Think it was yesterday. He talked about single-threaded meeti- meetings versus multi-threaded meetings. So the basic gist was that, uh, most of us tend to think that there's kind of one type of meeting we end up having, which is kind of we all go around the circle, we talk about things, and it's one topic and so on. And so he has some interesting ideas that he's observed from especially remote companies, and two, where they're able to have, um... One of them, he did, uh, he was at YouTube, uh, uh, before, and he called it the ball pen meetings. So basically, like, you bring everyone together and you slot kind of like you do, uh, for one or two hours. Um, it just happens to be everyone can talk about it, whatever, but because it's not scheduled, that leads to totally different types of interactions. So that was his thing, but he then lists a bunch of other companies and what they're doing in order

Daniel Ek 20:58 to have more productive meetings. So would highly recommend you to reading that too.

Ali Abdaal 21:01 Oh, nice. Yeah, I will check it out. Um, one thing I wanted to talk about before we talk about creator economy stuff. You, you mentioned, you know, the phrase high quality entrepreneurs, and you mentioned that, you know, at Spotify you're trying to, I guess, like everyone is, hire, hire the best of the best. I wonder, what are the traits you've seen that are common amongst the highest performers, the high- the sort of the, the best people that you work with, the people that you think, "Oh, I would love to clone this person 100 times"?

Daniel Ek 21:26 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 21:26 What do... Or what are their, like, behavioral traits?

Daniel Ek 21:29 The, the, the, hon- honestly, the single, um, biggest indicator, uh, is their ability to learn. Um, I don't think it's about skill, uh, or knowledge because if you're solving problems, you're gonna e- end up i- inevitably getting into situations

Daniel Ek 21:45 where you end up not knowing everything. So yes, i- initially, uh, if you have a lot of, uh, expertise about a certain domain, it does help because you can avoid running into all sorts of problems, et cetera. But, but certainly when you're solving problems, um, and I think that's the most important thing for any entrepreneur or executive to try to do. It's the quality of decision-making. You're gonna be forced, um, by meeting lots of, of, um, different things that you don't know anything about or you know very little about it. And so then it's really your ability to learn under a short period of time and how you learn. And so what I oftentimes try to do is I try to observe how people learn and their innate ability to learn and, and that then comes into curiosity. How curious are they? Uh, what patterns do they... So I'm interested in novel ways that people accumulate information. If they find, like, this kind of hidden path somewhere on this subreddit thread that, like, I don't even know how they got there. That's interesting. Uh, if, if it turns out that they're excellent in extracting information from other human beings that don't normally like to share their secrets, but everyone feels very comfortable around them, that's also could be another skill. There are many ways to do so, but, um, the curiosity of learning and the ability to learn over short periods of times, I think is the, the, um, biggest indicator of what eventually will be a high quality entrepreneur. So you have to do something that you're innately curious about, uh, and you're passionate about, right? Because otherwise you wouldn't have pursued it. Um, so I think that's the fallacy one. People look at people like myself and say, "Oh, that's gonna be great." So I think it's, like, very important to pick things you're passionate about and curious about, but then ultimately, how successful you are as an entrepreneur, um, is in your ability to make high quality decisions. But how are you s- supposed to make high quality decisions about things you know nothing about? In my case, learning the intricacies of copyright law and making decisions around there, or how do you hire a great CFO if you've never seen one? How do you hire a great CFO for a publicly traded company? That's like a totally different challenge than the first person who keeps your book, books around and pays the bill. Um, and the bar keeps going up, and there are new and new and new challenges constantly, and you can't... It's, it's impossible to have experience in all these things. Uh, hence your ability to learn over a short period of time, I think, is the, uh, highest indicator of success.

Ali Abdaal 24:16 Nice. Do you have a, like, a executive coach or anything like that?

Daniel Ek 24:19 Um, I do. Um, but to be honest, I, I work with various people in various parts of my journey. So I'm not one who's had, like, one mentor and that person's stuck around with me. I tend to work with people, uh, again, uh, that I find, like, um, has a corner of things, um, where I may not have much experience, uh, prior, um, and I'm able to pick up a lot of things because that person has that. So, so, um, I, I tend to look for, um, thinkers who are in a very Probably quite far field from myself.

Ali Abdaal 24:56 Mm.

Daniel Ek 24:56 Uh, w- and, and then I tend to work with them for a while. I don't, um, it, it might be a year, it might be a two, two-year stint. Then for a while I don't work with anyone, and then I find a

Daniel Ek 25:06 new one-

Ali Abdaal 25:06 Yeah

Daniel Ek 25:06 ... uh, that I can learn from, and try to, um, you know, surround myself with people who are thinking very differently than what I do.

Ali Abdaal 25:14 Mm. Uh, changing gears a bit. One of, one of the things that I think sort of music streaming platforms have done is, um, expand, I guess, the middle class of musicians. 'Cause I guess back in the day, uh, I mean, and still to an extent, there's a tiny amount of people making all of the money. But, um, you know, hearing some of the stats that your team was sharing, it sounds like, you know, there are loads more people that now make a living-

Daniel Ek 25:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 25:37 ... through Spotify streaming than there were in the past. But at the same time, there are tens of millions of people that can now post their music on Spotify, post their videos on YouTube, whatever the thing might be, who are not making any music at all.

Daniel Ek 25:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 25:50 So I wonder, how do you think, uh, how do, how do you think the audiobook thing in particular will change the way that creators or authors write books, and I guess the monetization side of that as well?

Daniel Ek 26:00 [lips smack] Yeah. Um, I don't know. And I, I mean, if, if you would've asked me how the music industry would've changed, uh, in some ways it changed beyond what I would have ever, uh, believed, and in some ways it changed less than what I ever believed as well. Um, you know, the reality is that, uh, the way, uh, the music industry still works is quite similar to how it's worked 15, 20 years ago. Yes, the, the, the way how you measure success is through streams instead of sales today, but how you A&R something, how you market, uh, something is still quite similar, um, in many regards. And so I, I, I don't profess to know how it's going to change. I think, uh, again, to the extent that it will change, my guess would be that, uh, you're gonna see a bigger diversity of authors being successful than the historical models. And it's quite simple from first principles, which means, you know, in, in the music world, we went from if you had to pay a dollar for every song you essentially wanted to listen to, the barrier was quite high for you to try a new song that you,

Daniel Ek 27:09 from a new, uh, artist that you didn't know anything about, um, unless you had a massive amount of disposable income of course. Um, and then piracy came along, and what ended up happening is people started sampling from lots of other places, and then Spotify really was about an easier way than piracy, and then that slowly turned the industry around again to monetization. So I think what's gonna happen now in the book industry that mostly work on the credit system that you talked about, which is very similar to buying a book, um, just flat out, um, the, the, you are purchasing books by authors, um, you know, um, either know or you have a high degree of trust.

Ali Abdaal 27:48 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Ek 27:49 So you end up going on recommendations and other things. Um, like you initially said, I think you're going to sample a lot more now just because the title seems interesting or because one person mentioned it, where it would've taken five or six or seven before. So I think you're gonna see a w- wider diversity of authors, and that in turn, uh, may of course hopefully lead to more authors being signed, because all of a sudden, um, the traditional norms of what constitutes, uh, what would work as a successful author or not will probably be changed. Now, the second question is the length of a book and all these things. If you'd asked me like, um, again, would I have imagined streaming, um, changing the length of a song, um, down to something? The answer probably would've been yes. But in reality, there hasn't been enormous amount. We w- went from about, uh, 4:30 to today, uh, 3:50, um, something like that. It's not changed to 30-second songs. It, it's still pretty much the, the same entity that it was before. It tends to be the longer intros does worse, but then again, you have a Taylor Swift that comes along, and then the longer intros work again.

Ali Abdaal 29:02 Yeah.

Daniel Ek 29:03 I think so much is just around novelty. People wanna hear what's familiar, but then yeah, what's surprising too. And of course, if you're an established artist, you probably will get a, a few more extra seconds before someone will judge your work.

Ali Abdaal 29:18 Mm.

Daniel Ek 29:18 Um, so you can do something else, whereas the first time, um, you know, artists, uh, and author probably gotta hook you straight away because you might not give it as many pages. So I think it will impact, but I think this is the beautiful thing, right? Uh, of having, uh, millions of people and having a platform, um, that authors in the end are going to experiment with. We're going to see it, and I don't know, and I don't know what consumers will like and what will resonate. I don't know what authors will like, but I think it will be different.

Ali Abdaal 29:49 Yeah. I can't wait to see how the, how the world changes. Um, my book is, is, is coming at end of December, and so I was just thinking, damn, the introduction is ev- even more important than what it was previously.

Daniel Ek 29:58 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 29:59 Um, I'd love to talk, um, just to end, about productivity. So we were talking at the, the party yesterday, you mentioned you're a bit of a, a productivity enthusiast, and I'm curious because, you know, you're, you know, this ridiculously high-flying CEO of a massive, like, publicly traded company. Your time is on a massive premium. So what are the strategies that you and your team use to help you squeeze the most out of your time? Or is, is that even the way that you think about it?

Daniel Ek 30:24 Um, yeah. It, it, it is how I think about it because I think the most valuable thing you can invest is your time. Um, and so, uh, on a personal basis, I can't say that I, I always succeed in doing it, but I, I do try to, um, make sure that, um, you know, again, a very simple things, but make sure I have, um, start the day in a perfect way. So one of, one of the great things that I try to do is I try to, um, not start the day by getting interrupted by phone calls, notifications, reading

Daniel Ek 30:56 emails, and all those things, but, but just start the day with the first half an hour, an hour, just, um, slow reading. Things that aren't urgent but are just, uh, thought provocative, provocative. I try to do exercise in the morning because it gives me more energy throughout the rest of the day, even if it's just a walk. Um, walk is actually my preferred thing, um, although I do more strength training these days because it's easier to fit into the schedule. So I struggle like most people, but I do try to... My morning ritual is incredibly important to set my mental state in the right thing. Um- And it is boosting my productivity. That would be one thing. The other thing is I don't schedule as much things as you think. Um, so you may think, uh, I'm a very busy person.

Ali Abdaal 31:40 Mm.

Daniel Ek 31:41 Uh, and I am, uh, I am in some ways, but in some ways I'm not. Most people are surprised if, if they get a glimpse at my calendar because it's quite empty. There are weeks when I have a lot to do. Um, like, uh, this week, um, I'm sort of back to back to back. But most of my weeks are, um, pretty empty. I usually have one or two things in during the day, and the rest of the time, um, is time off. And I think psychologically that messes with a lot of people because they're like, "Well, I'm not doing anything. I'm not very productive." But I think you have to... The b- the biggest learning I've had, I used to, back in the day, I used to model myself on other people that were successful and that I looked up to and that I thought did very great things. So, uh, again, I'll, I'll use an example. Uh, my board member, Shishir, he, um, he published a lot of his productivity ritual, and he's kind of a, a geek and, uh, on this stuff. So he, he, he, um, he publishes a mock-up calendar of what his week looked like. Um, and I thought it was brilliant because he has many smart, smart ideas on, on like one-to-one meetings, one to many meetings, many to many meetings, and all these kind of like variants of these things and, um, regular cadence for this, this, this, this, this and then occasional cadence for this and this. So it's just a great system. The problem was, um, I copied it, uh, from him straight off because I was like, "This is brilliant."

Ali Abdaal 33:06 Mm.

Daniel Ek 33:07 And the problem, um, that I ended up, um, running into two weeks into it, I was, uh, I was about to kill myself because it was like the worst schedule ever. I didn't feel any energy at all. Uh, I did a lot of things, but I wasn't very productive. And, um, my realization through that process is you have to do things, you have to understand your own psychology, uh, uh, and you have to understand where you can add the most amount of leverage. And we are all different. Some people get a lot of energy from meeting people. Uh, some people are great delegators, um, and get their done, uh, most of their work done because they're able to get other people to do the majority of the work. Uh, and they're kind of just the spider kind of coordinating all those things. Some people are more creative, and they, they, um, they are better off when you have two or three or four, um, hours of blocked out time, and they need that in order to produce high quality work. So they don't do a lot, but they do fewer things of higher quality. And I think, um, you have to think about it, um, as an individual, like both what your own psychology is so that you can get the maximum out of yourself, but you also have to think about the surrounding. Um, so I get that you may not be able to take four hours off, even if it's your psychology, if you work a nine-to-five job and you have a boss who tells you to show up for various meetings. Totally understand that. But to the extent that you can be true to your psychology, I think you'll, you'll, you'll make, um, increase massive amounts of productivity gains. But we think we have to adhere to this, uh, schedule. So let's translate that back now to me, uh, to the question you asked. But I felt like I had to, um, explain a little bit more about-

Ali Abdaal 34:51 Mm

Daniel Ek 34:51 ... more, more of my philosophy to productivity first. Um, so in my case, I, I don't have a lot of things, um, blocked out, not because, um, um, uh, n-not, not because I look at it as I'm the creative person or I'm not. I'm, I would actually say I'm a hybrid, and I think most people are a hybrid of both. Um, but the most important thing for me is to be able to roam free to the highest, uh, and most important area. And what I find is that by b- pre-booking that in advance, I set up myself for failure so that I don't have enough time for the things that truly end up in this kind of important and quite urgent things, um, that the business needs to, to take care of. And I have a team that tends to deal with a lot of things for me, but my, my biggest job and my biggest help is actually providing leverage for them. And the way to do that is, um, you know, many of them run the day to days and run lots of people and orgs and meetings and all that stuff. It is like they get a hairy problem. They don't know what to do about that problem. It may take two or three or four or five hours or even two weeks, um, to sort that out. Um, that's where I do my best work, and that is sometimes negotiating deals. That is sometime get, uh, really in the weeds of a product strategy thing and like sort out, uh, everything from how the button works to, uh, whatever other things, um, there may be. And sometimes, uh, that's almost like being a coach, interviewing everyone on the team, understanding why the team isn't working so that I can go to that leader and suggest what we should be doing differently. But that's because I like playing that part and, um, I feel useful in that part. And my psychology is one where, uh, I tend to want to have a lot of free time in order to jump to the highest value action. Um, it's not so much that other leaders, uh, couldn't have done it differently and probably made it work, uh, very well for them as well.

Ali Abdaal 36:55 Mm. That's great. Um, how do you think about the balance between, you know, you wanna do a lot of things versus the value of focusing on like one or two or three things? And I guess I'm curious because if we just think about Spotify, you know, you guys are doing great at music, then you added podcasts and now you've added audiobooks. I know that you've started a couple of other companies as well. You've got the health one and like, uh, you know, there's the, there's one side of people that says, "Focus on the single most important thing But then there's like clearly sometimes more than one important thing. How, how do you, how do you juggle that balancing act?

Daniel Ek 37:27 Yeah, it's, it's funny you mention that. Uh, we have, uh, most of my, um, senior, um, executives, um, here in New York at this moment, and I was just giving a talk about precisely that. Um, and, and so o- o- one, one way I like to think about it is there's, um, there's, uh, a framework called the Eisenhower Matrix. Um, the basic gist is it's a two-by-two

Daniel Ek 37:48 grid, uh, important, not important, urgent, not im- uh, urgent. And cognitively, I think we struggle with everything that's urgent.

Ali Abdaal 37:56 Mm.

Daniel Ek 37:56 Um, both the urgent important and urgent not important. And, um, I think most people are pretty good at procrastinate on, uh, the things that's, um, not important, um, and, uh, not urgent, right? Like, we're, we're able to kind of not do those things. Um, I think we struggle in doing, uh, the important, uh, the ... Sorry, the urgent, um, not important, and I think we struggle with the important and not urgent.

Ali Abdaal 38:26 Yeah.

Daniel Ek 38:26 Um, so those are the two quadrants to, to focus more on. Um, and, and there it, it, it is really tricky, but I think the most im- uh, important thing I would, I would give as advice is to if you keep your eyesight, if you don't think in increments of weeks and months, but you keep a balance between very long-term goals, and you keep a balance of very short-term goals and go back and forth between those two and oscillate, which is very hard mentally for people to do, uh, you're less likely to end up with a lot of urgent things, right? There should be very few urgent things, uh, that you need to do. Um, and many things you think is urgent isn't, uh, that important, right? And you should be either delegating them or ultimately eliminating them. But psychologically, we're wired to wanna deal with just the things that's urgent, and if it's not urgent now, even important things we'll struggle with. The key is to then try to, um, create a forcing mechanism where you actually schedule those types of things, too. Um, so in, in my particular case, yes, there are a lot of things, and everyone thinks ev- everything is, uh, really urgent. Uh, and this is h- where you have to be very hard, too, as a leader. I, I think the hardest, single hardest thing psychologically is we tend to wanna be liked-

Ali Abdaal 39:43 Mm

Daniel Ek 39:43 ... um, by our other people. Um, but the hardest things to do as a leader is you have to have a very high bar for people, both in terms of what they nee- need to do. But, uh, the high bar means it's, um, u- unless it's a hell yeah, it's no, right, on almost everything. So I say, uh, no to so many very, very good ideas.

Ali Abdaal 40:05 Mm.

Daniel Ek 40:05 But if they're not amazing, I won't do it. And every now and then, uh, I find something that's amazing, um, like the healthcare thing, and I'm like, "Yeah, uh, I need to do this." Um, but there are only very, very few things that I can do myself.

Ali Abdaal 40:22 Mm.

Daniel Ek 40:22 Um, the rest of them I have to find able, competent people to do.

Ali Abdaal 40:26 Nice. Uh, final question. How do you go about balancing the demands of being a CEO of a huge ass company with also being a husband and a father and, like, the personal side of things? Any tips? [laughs]

Daniel Ek 40:40 Yeah. Um, look, uh, you should ask my [laughs] my wife about that one. Um, no, but I, I, I think the most important thing, again, um, was, um, uh, I, I, I, I don't ... Um, the, the, the reality i- is that you can't be amazing at everything. Uh, that's the first thing you have to, um, understand. And so i- if, if you're, um, uh ... One, one thing I do hate is when people talk about work-life balance, um, because people talk about it as there being an equilibrium of some sort. Um, and the reality is I think you're going to be disappointed in life because my experience has been nothing is ever in balance.

Daniel Ek 41:26 Uh, you're always going to be, um, imbalanced in some shape or form. So if you think about it as entropy instead, you think about it as, like, um, I don't, um, work to live. Um, I do what I love to do. So I have a lot of fun while doing it. I don't live to work, but it's the, um ... Uh, I, I really enjoy what I do, too, so it doesn't feel like a huge drag. And if you're in a job where, uh, whatever you're doing feels like a huge drag, you should really try. I, I can sympathize if you can't at this moment, but you should really try to create a plan where you get out of, um, uh, out, out, out of that job. And so that means in my case, work is very important, uh, relative to that. Am I going to be the most present father at the same time if that means that it's time spent that is the p- the primary indicator? The reality is if I think so, and am I going to be the best husband if that means that, uh, time spent is, uh, that, or the best brother or the best son by spending time? Um, I, I think I lose because I'm not going to be able to spend time because I do spend a disproportionate amount of time on my work. And so I've gotten to grip with that. Now, what I do try to do is I try to increase the quality of my interactions even if I have limited time. And so a huge part of what I do with my executive assistants, weirdly enough, is I plan work less and I plan all the private parts more. So I try to increase the quality of that. Um, so as an example, one advice I end up, um, getting, um, by s- by someone, um, I think it was maybe two years ago or something, uh, which was a wonderful thing, was that, um, this was a father of, um- Um, a, uh, number of different kids, and he, he was struggling with this thing about how do I provide attention to each child? And then he realized that the single best thing he could do was to... I'm cutting to the chase because it's a [laughs] longer story. But he, he, um, he realized that the best thing he could do was to spend one weekend individually with each child. Um, and I think it ended up being five kids or something, so basically 10% of his weekends. Um, is that a good investment, spending 10% of your weekends individually with each child? And, um, he thought it would be, and, um, the, the way he did do that is you have one year to plan it.

Ali Abdaal 44:05 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Ek 44:05 And so you figure out together, what do we both enjoy doing? And so with one of the children it was fishing, so they went away fishing for a weekend. With another one, they like roller coasters, so they went to theme park and, and went like crazy. A third person, um, may have been something else. And so I liked that philosophy so much that I actually copied it to elsewhere in life too. I have my friend groups, and I try to, with my friends, I don't get to see them as often as I would like to, but I try to make something memorable, uh, with them. In my case, I like football a lot, and so I tend to go, uh, watch games m- with my friends. We try to find memorable games where we can, uh, do something fun like an El Clásico, or I used to travel around to, uh, the Old Firm and, like, pretty much all of the derbies, uh, rivalry around-

Ali Abdaal 44:53 Mm

Daniel Ek 44:53 ... uh, the world with one friend group. Uh, another friend group, uh, we like driving experiences, so we, uh, go to different places and do, uh, driving. Um, so it's, it, it's been about sort of finding out, uh, those different things. Um, and I try to do the same with my daughters. One, one of them is more artsy. The other one, uh, is more activity driven, likes to be outdoors and do, um, lots of different things. So just finding that, um, thing that ticks with them, spending that quality time, being present in that moment, not, no interruptions, no nothing. Um, I, I know a lot of parents, and again, um, um, there, there is nothing wrong with that either, but, but, uh, I see it and it, there's this, this tendency, you're kind of like, "Yeah, yeah, let's play," and then a work call comes in and you're trying to do texts, and you're, you're not fully present either. So I, I try to make sure at least, even if I can't spend as much time, um, to increase the quality of each, uh, interaction.

Ali Abdaal 45:52 Amazing. Daniel, thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Um, I know you don't like giving advice, but if you had to give one piece of advice for anyone who's gotten to the end of this and who, who's been inspired by your story and by what you've built at Spotify, what would that be?

Daniel Ek 46:04 Oh, wow. [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 46:05 [laughs]

Daniel Ek 46:05 I, I don't like gi- like giving ad- ad- advice, as you said. Um, well, um, I, I, I guess, um, my biggest advice is, um, stay curious, um, and, uh, be focused on learning. Um, the, the biggest single bi- biggest investment you could do is in yourself. And, um, it's how you spend your time, and you should spend it, um, this, uh, appropriate amount of time in just learning things. It is fun to do so. You're gonna have more social, great social interactions with vari- people you may have n- not fo- found commonality, and if you know something about them that you can relate to, uh, and I believe you're just gonna have a richer life, uh, overall. So I think that's, uh, maybe cliché, but I s- uh, think it's still so true and

Daniel Ek 46:58 so few people do it, so that would be my advice.

Ali Abdaal 47:00 Brilliant. Daniel, thank you so much.

Daniel Ek 47:01 Thank you.

Ali Abdaal 47:02 All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.