Spotify

What Spotify Actually Sells

Spotify offers on-demand streaming of music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported tier and a paid Premium subscription. The company is legally domiciled in Luxembourg, operates from Stockholm and New York, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SPOT. As a foreign private issuer it reports on SEC Form 6-K rather than the 10-K and proxy statements US-domiciled companies file. For the fourth quarter of 2025 it reported revenue of 4.5 billion euros and 751 million monthly active users, and for full-year 2025 it posted operating income of 2.2 billion euros, its second consecutive profitable year after reaching its first full-year operating profit in 2024.[1] The business is built on licensing deals with record labels and publishers, which means Spotify's catalog, and the political controversies attached to it, depend heavily on third-party content owners and the creators it signs.

How Spotify Governs Speech on Its Platform

Spotify publishes a set of Platform Rules that define what content is prohibited, covering dangerous, deceptive, sensitive, and illegal material. The rules bar content that incites violence or hatred, glorifies hate groups, or promotes dangerous false medical information, with explicit examples that include calling COVID-19 or other serious diseases a hoax or claiming approved vaccines are designed to cause death.[2] The company says it enforces these rules through a mix of automated detection and human review teams, and it convenes a Safety Advisory Council of outside experts to help shape policy on hate and extremism.[2] Spotify has at times pointed to the scale of that enforcement: in a 2022 statement it said it had removed more than 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, though that figure is the company's own characterization rather than an independently audited count.[20] Its policies also distinguish between content and conduct: Spotify has at times said an artist's off-platform behavior can affect how it editorially promotes that artist's work, a stance it first articulated in a 2018 "hateful conduct" policy that it later softened amid industry pushback.[3] This framework is the backdrop against which its highest-profile speech controversy, the Joe Rogan podcast, played out.

The Rogan Deal and the Content-Moderation Fight

Spotify's most visible political flashpoint has been Joe Rogan. The company signed "The Joe Rogan Experience" to an exclusive deal in 2020, and in early 2022 musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their catalogs in protest over COVID-19 vaccine claims made on the show.[4] Spotify added content advisories to pandemic-related episodes, and CEO Daniel Ek said publicly he did not believe silencing Rogan was the answer while also condemning the host's past use of racial slurs, roughly 70 episodes of which were removed.[4][5] In February 2024 Spotify signed Rogan to a new multi-year deal reported to be worth up to $250 million and, notably, ended the show's exclusivity, allowing it to appear on Apple, YouTube, and Amazon as well, though Spotify retained the exclusive right to sell advertising on the show.[5] Neil Young returned his music to the platform the following month, while stating his objection to Rogan had not changed.[6] The episode became a widely cited case study in how platforms handle controversial speech, with observers across the spectrum debating whether Spotify was protecting open expression or dodging editorial responsibility.

The Helsing Investment and the Artist Exodus

A second, larger controversy centers on founder Daniel Ek personally. Through his venture firm Prima Materia, Ek led funding rounds into Helsing, a German defense-technology company that builds AI software for military systems and combat drones, first investing more than $100 million in 2021 and then leading a round of roughly 600 million euros (about $700 million) in 2025, after which he became Helsing's chairman.[7][8] Beginning in mid-2025, a wave of artists pulled their catalogs in protest, including Massive Attack (reported by The Guardian as the first major-label act to do so), King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, and others, citing objections to their streaming revenue being linked to weapons technology.[8][9][19] Ek was unmoved, telling the Financial Times: "Personally, I'm not concerned about it. I focus more on doing what I think is right and I am 100 per cent convinced that this is the right thing for Europe."[8] The protests also revived longstanding artist anger over Spotify's low per-stream royalties, often estimated at around $3 per thousand streams.[9]

Discovery Mode, Bundling, and the Royalty Fight

Beyond individual controversies, Spotify's core business model puts it in recurring tension with the artists and songwriters it depends on, and that tension has drawn fire from both parties in Washington. The clearest example of the business model is Discovery Mode, a program launched in November 2020 that boosts a song's placement in algorithmic recommendations like Radio and Autoplay in exchange for the artist accepting a roughly 30 percent reduction in royalties on those streams.[10] A group of House Democrats, including Yvette Clarke, Judy Chu, Tony Cardenas, Jerry Nadler, and Hank Johnson, wrote to Ek warning that the arrangement could trigger a "race to the bottom" in which artists feel pressured to accept lower pay simply to stay visible; the Recording Academy likened the model to payola, and by 2026 the program was the subject of class-action litigation alleging deceptive pay-for-play practices.[10][11]

A separate and explicitly bipartisan fight erupted over audiobook bundling. After Spotify added audiobook access to its Premium plans and reclassified them as bundled subscriptions, the Mechanical Licensing Collective sued in May 2024, alleging the move improperly slashed the mechanical royalties owed to songwriters and publishers; a court dismissed the suit in January 2025 by holding that the Premium service is a bundle, and the collective sought to amend its complaint.[12] In June 2025, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico jointly asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Spotify, arguing it had converted music subscribers into higher-priced bundles without their consent and used the maneuver to cut royalties to American songwriters, a shift that publishers estimated cost them roughly $230 million in its first year.[13] The bipartisan Senate letter is a notable data point: opposition to Spotify's royalty practices is not confined to one side of the aisle.

Where the Political Money Goes

Federal political contributions associated with Spotify's employees and affiliates lean strongly Democratic. In the 2024 cycle, these contributions totaled about $182,000, and the single largest recipient was Kamala Harris's campaign at $106,683, followed by the DNC Services Corporation at $15,729.[14] Other top recipients, including Elissa Slotkin, Chris Pappas, Ashley Ehasz, and Ritchie Torres, were all Democrats, and the contributions routed through ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform.[14] Among the portion that went to congressional candidates, OpenSecrets recorded 94.21% to Democrats and 0.35% to Republicans.[14] Spotify does not operate a traditional corporate PAC and reported no outside (super PAC) spending; its federal political footprint is employee contributions plus lobbying.[14][15] The company is an active federal lobbyist, spending about $2.04 million in 2024 and $1.58 million in 2023, largely on issues affecting streaming, royalties, and technology policy.[15]

In Europe: Taking On Apple

Spotify's political engagement is not limited to the United States. In 2019 the company filed a formal antitrust complaint against Apple with the European Commission (case AT.40437), arguing that Apple's App Store rules, including a 30 percent commission and a ban on telling users about cheaper subscription options elsewhere, unfairly disadvantaged competitors to Apple Music.[16] The complaint resulted in March 2024 in the European Commission fining Apple roughly 1.8 billion euros (about $2 billion), its first-ever antitrust penalty against the company; Apple said it would appeal.[16] The case made Spotify a leading corporate voice for aggressive platform regulation in Europe, a stance that put a US-listed company on the side of EU regulators against another major US technology firm.

Founding, Ownership, and Founder Control

Spotify was founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and launched its streaming service in 2008. The two founders retain extraordinary control through a dual-class structure: beyond their ordinary shares they hold "beneficiary certificates" carrying ten votes each, and per Spotify's most recent annual report they together controlled about 70.7% of the company's voting power (Lorentzon 41.6%, Ek 29.1%) despite owning a far smaller share of the actual equity.[17] That concentration is why Ek's outside investments, like Helsing, attract so much attention: the same individual exerts decisive control over the company's direction. Ek served as CEO from the beginning, but in September 2025 Spotify announced he would become Executive Chairman effective January 1, 2026, with longtime executives Alex Norstrom and Gustav Soderstrom stepping up as co-CEOs while Ek continues to set capital allocation and long-term strategy.[18]

Where to Find Them

Spotify is available as a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription through mobile apps, desktop, web, and a wide range of connected devices. Its official site is spotify.com.

Footnotes

[1] Spotify Technology S.A., SEC Form 6-K, Q4 2025 Shareholder Update, filed February 10, 2026. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-02-10/spotify-q4-2025-earnings/

[2] Spotify, Platform Rules, accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.spotify.com/us/safetyandprivacy/platform-rules

[3] Spotify, "Spotify Announces New Hate Content and Hateful Conduct Public Policy," company newsroom, May 2018. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-05-10/spotify-announces-new-hate-content-and-hateful-conduct-public-policy/

[4] Electronic Frontier Foundation, "What Spotify, Neil Young, and Joe Rogan Tell Us About Content Moderation," February 2022. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/what-spotify-neil-young-and-joe-rogan-tell-us-about-content-moderation

[5] Todd Spangler, Variety, "Joe Rogan's Spotify Deal Renewal Worth Up to $250 Million, Podcast Will No Longer Be Exclusive to the Platform," February 2, 2024. https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/joe-rogan-renews-spotify-deal-not-exclusive-1235895424/

[6] Deadline, "Neil Young Ends Spotify Boycott After Joe Rogan Misinformation Slam," March 13, 2024. https://deadline.com/2024/03/neil-young-spotify-boycott-joe-rogan-1235857215/

[7] Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, "Spotify faces boycott over CEO's $700m investment in AI military defence startup," 2025. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/spotify-faces-boycott-over-ceos-700m-investment-in-ai-military-defence-startup/

[8] Larisha Paul, Rolling Stone, "Artists Who've Left Spotify Over CEO Daniel Ek's Military Tech Ties," September 30, 2025. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-left-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-military-tech-1235425098/

[9] August Brown, Los Angeles Times, "Spotify boycott: Artists leave 'garbage hole' platform after CEO invests in AI weapons," September 2025. https://www.aol.com/news/spotify-boycott-artists-leave-garbage-100000385.html

[10] Variety / congressional correspondence, "Spotify under fire from US Congress over Discovery Mode royalty policy," 2021. https://variety.com/2021/music/news/spotify-discovery-mode-congress-1235007301/

[11] Law Commentary, "Spotify Faces New Class Action Lawsuit Alleging 'Payola-Style' Practices in Discovery Mode," January 2026. https://www.lawcommentary.com/articles/spotify-faces-new-class-action-lawsuit-alleging-payola-style-practices-in-discovery-mode

[12] Spotify Technology S.A., SEC Form 6-K (interim financial statements, MLC litigation disclosure), period ended June 30, 2025, filed July 29, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001639920/000163992025000012/spot-20250630x6xk.htm

[13] Music Business Worldwide, "US senators call for FTC probe into Spotify's bundling practices," June 23, 2025. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/us-senators-call-for-ftc-probe-into-spotifys-bundling-practices/

[14] OpenSecrets, "Spotify Profile: Recipients and Congressional Candidates, 2024 cycle," accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/spotify/recipients?id=D000068647

[15] OpenSecrets, "Spotify Profile: Summary, 2024 cycle," accessed June 14, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/spotify/summary?id=D000068647

[16] NPR, "The EU fines Apple nearly $2 billion for hindering music streaming competition," March 4, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1235887120/apple-music-spotify-fine-european-union

[17] Spotify Technology S.A., SEC Form 20-F, Annual Report (fiscal year ended December 31, 2024), filed 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001639920/000163992025000003/ck0001639920-20241231.htm

[18] Spotify Technology S.A., SEC Form 6-K, "Spotify Announces Leadership Evolution," filed September 30, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001639920/000114036125036641/ef20056441_ex99-1.htm

[19] The Guardian, "Massive Attack remove music from Spotify to protest against CEO Daniel Ek's investment in AI military," September 18, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/sep/18/massive-attack-remove-music-from-spotify-daniel-ek-ai-military

[20] Spotify company statement (2022), as reported in The Independent, "Neil Young returns to Spotify after Joe Rogan boycott," March 2024. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/neil-young-spotify-joe-rogan-b2513893.html