Spotify said on Tuesday that the founder Daniel Ek move as CEO to become executive president, in an announcement that sent his slippery actions to Tuesday’s profession.
The Stockholm-based streaming giant said that EK will be replaced by two lieutenants who will become CO-PDGs: director of products and technologies Gustav Södersröm and business director Alex Norström. The pair, which is also currently co -chair, will go to its new jobs on January 1 and present itself to EK.
Spotify said in a press release that the move “formalized” how Spotify has been working since 2023, Söderström and Norström largely leading strategic development and operational execution.
EK said he had already “given a large part of daily management and strategic orientation” to the pair.
“This change simply corresponds to the titles to the way we already operate,” he said. As an executive president, EK said that he will focus on the “long arc” of Spotify.
In a session of online questions and answers after the announcement, EK said that its new role would not be ceremonial that investors having an “American perspective” could expect.
In Europe, an executive president is generally “very active in the company” and acts as a representative of “certain stakeholders” such as governments, he said.
EK said he always saw growth opportunities, including a “huge part of the world that is really not used to streaming” extending from Asia to Africa, as well as new technologies, including artificial intelligence.
“I will continue to push for us to look at the corner of the street, to stay focused in the long term,” he said.
Since EK founded Spotify about two decades ago, the rise in the platform has helped transform the music industry and paved the way for modern streaming. Spotify now has more than 700 million subscribers and a library of more than 100 million songs, 7 million Podcast titles and 350,000 audio pounds.
Spotify’s shares, which have doubled in the past year, fell by more than 5% in the afternoon trade after the announcement.
