Alex Norstrom and, below, Gustav Soderstrom say they will run Spotify "as a single person"
Although the co-chief model seems to be in vogue (see Netflix, Oracle and Comcast), it remains reasonably unusual and it's easy to imagine how personalities might clash, even at a Scandinavian company that prides itself on being ego-lite.
Interviewing Soderstrom and Norstrom over Google Meet (minus video, due to a technical issue in the Spotify boardroom), I asked: which of them is the alpha? "I think it depends on who you ask," answered a voice that I later identified as Soderstrom. "If you go to San Francisco, people would say I'm the face towards, like, the tech crowd. I think if you ask the music industry, it's certainly Alex."
Soderstrom and Norstrom point out that they've worked together in harmony for three years in their current roles. One of their secrets, said Soderstrom, is that they share all of their "direct reports". In other words, senior employees within Spotify report to both of them.
"It almost sounds bad," he added, "but we really run it as a single person. And my view is: co-operation is hard, but if you can overcome that, you do get the benefit of having twice the brain power." Norstrom added: "To this day, we haven't had a blowout that we haven't been able to overcome together."
The cynics' take on Ek's resignation is that it was prompted by a rising tide of artist dissatisfaction with his outside interests. British rock band Massive Attack last month joined other acts in pulling their catalogue from Spotify to protest against Ek's investment in AI defence company Helsing. The Spotify line is that this move had been in the works for years.
Critics might also argue that Ek's "departure" is not quite as dramatic as it might at first have seemed. As executive chairman, he will retain responsibility for "strategy", "capital allocation", "regulatory efforts" and "shap[ing] the next decade for Spotify".
I asked his successors: will Ek still be the boss? "No," said Soderstrom. "We are co-CEOs, which means we are running the company." He added, though, that Ek's role would not be "ceremonial" and that this is "the way we want it".
Soderstrom and Norstrom will inherit the stewardship of a company that has achieved household-name status in the UK, US and much of the developed world. Its catalogue of 100 million songs, seven million podcast titles and 350,000 audiobooks has drawn in 700 million users, 276 million of whom pay a monthly subscription for premium features, most commonly an ad-free listening experience. Listed in the US, the company has a market value of $139 billion (£103 billion), making it one of Europe's largest businesses.
The challenge for the incoming co-chiefs is to find growth, both in developing markets such as Latin America where users might have less money to spend, and in its existing heartlands. "We have 3 per cent of the world's population subscribing to Spotify today," said Norstrom. "If you ask Gustav and I, like, are you guys crazy? Do you think you can get to 90 per cent-plus? Yeah, maybe that would be crazy. But is it so unimaginable that we get to 10 per cent, 15 per cent? I don't think so."
Taking Spotify's paying subscriptions into the billions is a lofty target. And some might struggle to envisage the company growing much more in markets such as the UK, where it already commands half of the 32.4 million people who pay for music-streaming subscriptions, according to MIDiA, the entertainment research firm. The rate of new music subscribers in the UK has been slowing since 2018, and so finding new premium customers is a challenge for Spotify.
The answer, presumably, is to keep raising prices to grow revenue here. An individual UK subscription costs £11.99 in the UK, up £2 in the past two years. Norstrom confirmed that the plan is to keep making better products, and "pricing and packaging will follow from that".
Before interviewing Soderstrom and Norstrom, I asked several music industry insiders what they would like to know about the future of Spotify. Many shared concerns about artists not earning enough money.
"We are the most artist-friendly platform," said Soderstrom. "And we are certainly generating the most revenue for these artists."
Spotify's boast is that it paid out more than $10 billion in music royalties last year. For each song streamed for more than 30 seconds, it is estimated to pay out between $0.003 and $0.005. The company says its payments mean that it splits revenues in a 70-30 ratio in favour of artists.
The big picture for smaller artists, though, is that after labels, managers and other music industry colleagues have taken their cut, there is not much left for them. While artists could once rely on a steady income from record, tape or CD sales, now many are forced to tour, put on more live shows and to make a living through other work.
The other main concern from the music industry is artificial intelligence.
Last month, Spotify declared war on AI "slop". The platform said that in the past year it had taken down 75 million "spammy tracks", including impersonations, bulk uploading and duplicates of original songs using generative AI tools. The more these tracks are played, the less money is left for real artists.
Spotify said it would launch an enhanced "spam filter" and make it easier for artists to report impersonation. It is encouraging artists to disclose when they have used AI technology to produce a song. But some in the music industry believe these rules don't go far enough.
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Ed Newton-Rex, a tech entrepreneur who campaigns for greater copyright protection in the AI era, described the new rules as the "absolute minimum Spotify could be doing" and noted that the AI disclosures are voluntary. The result, he said, was that the streaming giant still "allows fully AI-generated music to continue being uploaded, and recommended to users, with no clear label attached".
Many human musicians would, no doubt, like Spotify to block music made entirely with AI, such as The Velvet Sundown, the synthetic rock band that rose up through the listening charts earlier this year. This music, which does not impersonate any specific human artists, does not breach Spotify's rules.
Asked if The Velvet Sundown and other AI acts are welcome on Spotify, Soderstrom said: "We do not decide what are the right tools for what is good creativity. That is something consumers decide. What we make sure is that there is no impersonation of likeness, no abuse of the royalty payout system. We are not deciders of what is good creativity."
He added: "We don't think we should decide what [users] are allowed to listen to."
After I was informed that my allotted time with Soderstrom and Norstrom had passed, I chanced my arm with one last question: who will be their most streamed artists of 2025?
Soderstrom reckoned his bet might be Fred Again. And Norstrom predicted Justin Bieber. Both will be hoping to find more "Beliebers" next year as they seek to build Spotify's ubiquity in the post-Ek era.