Stockholm (AFP)

He became a billionaire by revolutionizing the music market, and now wants to afford his favorite football club, Arsenal: Daniel Ek, co-founder and boss of Spotify, embodies the success of a child from working-class Sweden who led his career. start-up on Wall Street.

Bald skull and three-day-old beard, sneakers and jacket on a printed t-shirt, the 38-year-old Stockholmer is cultivating his urban thirty-something bet, any CEO of a company that is currently worth some $ 55 billion.

For some, he is the visionary who gave Europe one of its rare "tech" champions, and revived the music industry while holding out against its big rivals, Apple by head.

For the others, he is only a merchant who exploits the creators without remunerating them at the right price, contenting himself to watch over his precious agreements with the "majors", by using the holding companies in Cyprus and Luxembourg.

History is not always easy to disentangle from the legend, maintained by this shy Swede, whom former colleagues nicknamed "Spice".

"They found that he always tended to spice up his stories to make them more interesting," Sven Carlsson, co-author of "Spotify from the inside" told AFP.

- programming master -

For Daniel Ek ("oak", in Swedish), as for Spotify, the starting point is called Rågsved, a modest suburb in the south of Stockholm, where he grew up.

Coming from a working-class background, he was still just a little boy when his father left home.

It was also there that he developed a passion for Arsenal, following the exploits of Swedish international Anders Limpar who played for the Gunners in the early 1990s.

Kid gifted in programming - "I want to do better than Bill Gates", he boasted at 11 years old - the young Daniel already earns his living in college by creating websites.

He will tell of having transformed several of his comrades into subcontractors of his small business.

At 23, he landed his first million dollars by selling Advertigo, an online advertising company, and found himself a sponsor in the person of Martin Lorentzon, a businessman 14 years his senior with a fortune already made.

At the start of 2006, the duo imagined a legal and mainly free music distribution service in the face of the pirate download platforms that were swarming at the time.

It is while hanging out in underwear in Daniel's apartment in Rågsved, overheated by computer servers, that the name of the start-up is born, says Sven Carlsson.

"Because you are young and in my case quite naive, you often say to yourself + that, it should not be too hard. + When I founded Spotify, I did not even know that I needed licenses from the houses of records, "said Ek a few years later.

He spent two years on planes to finally convince the music majors to open their catalogs to him: Spotify finally launched its service in 2008.

- With Thierry Henry -

A decade of obstacle course followed which saw the company expand from the Swedish market alone to other European countries and then to the United States in 2011, despite the hostility of Apple and Steve Jobs.

The flagship, launched in a wild race for growth, is still fragile: fifteen years after its founding, Spotify has yet to generate its first annual profit.

But with more than 300 million active users and nearly half of paying subscribers, he is now measuring the competition, from Amazon to Apple to Chinese Tecent, with whom he has forged an alliance.

In Silicon Valley, Daniel Ek can count on Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, one of Spotify's first major allies, present at his wedding in 2016.

With 9.2% of the capital - but a third of the voting rights according to Spotify's annual report - his personal fortune is estimated at nearly $ 5 billion, according to Forbes.

What to offer, after the music, an adventure on the other big stage of the world star-system: football.

Daniel Ek confirmed last week that he was preparing an offer to buy London club Arsenal, following the Super League fiasco in which current owner American Stan Kroenke has joined.

The latter, faced with a sling from supporters, assured that he had no intention of selling.

"I prepared myself for the idea that it could be a long journey," replied Ek, who has allied himself with former club glories like Thierry Henry.

Paradox for the one who has always refused to sell Spotify, and gives as a first advice to those who have created their business: "do not sell it".

© 2021 AFP