Short answers, pulled from the story.
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon established Spotify in Stockholm, Sweden during April 2006. The company name originated from a misunderstanding where Lorentzon shouted a word that Ek misheard as spotify before they conceived it as a portmanteau of spot and identify.
By the third quarter of 2024, Spotify reported figures climbing to 640 million monthly active users alongside 252 million subscribers. This data reflects growth from earlier periods such as December 2023 when the platform ranked as the 47th most-visited website globally.
Approximately 70% of total revenue goes to rights holders who then pay artists individually based on stream numbers relative to total songs streamed rather than fixed prices per sale. Rights holders receive average payouts between $0.000029 and $0.0084 per stream according to available reports.
The service remains unavailable in mainland China while podcasting features are restricted in specific regions including Bangladesh, Belarus, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Moldova, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Uganda, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the company also temporarily closed its office there and suspended all services indefinitely.
The company achieved profitability for the first time in fiscal year 2024 with a net profit of €1.14 billion ($1.17 billion). This milestone followed years of financial filings that previously reported losses such as the near US$60 million net loss recorded during 2011.