About this episode
Gustav Söderström discusses his journey at Spotify and the company's strategic responses to competition.
Gustav Söderström is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Spotify, the world's largest streaming platform, with more than 760 million users across 180 countries. He earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, founded Kenet Works in 2003 — a mobile community software company acquired by Yahoo! in 2006 — and later co-founded 13th Lab, an augmented reality startup acquired by Facebook's Oculus division. He joined Spotify in 2009 and spent the next 18 years building the product and technology organization from the inside, rising from Chief Product and Technology Officer to Co-President before becoming Co-CEO alongside Alex Norström at the start of 2026. Spotify survived an existential challenge from Apple, which launched Apple Music in 2015 and told its teams internally they would kill Spotify within six months. Spotify's answer was a three-part strategy: a stronger free tier, superior personalization, and ubiquity across non-Apple hardware. All three bets paid out. The throughline in everything both Söderström and Spotify build is a conviction that media should be time well spent. Spotify surveyed users anonymously across major platforms…
People in this episode
Host: David Senra
Guest: Gustav Söderström
Topics covered
- Spotify
- streaming
- technology
- business strategy
- media consumption
- Gen Z
Keywords
- Spotify
- Gustav Söderström
- streaming
- business strategy
- Gen Z
- media consumption
- technology
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Spotify, Kenet Works, Yahoo!, 13th Lab, Facebook, Oculus, Apple, Apple Music
Places: 180 countries, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
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