In its last financial report covering 2014 it made $1.3 billion ($1.67 billion) revenue, up 45% from 2013. In Spotify’s case, it is feeling the heat from fast rising cashed-up rivals as Apple Music. Three of the five biggest Swedish technology successes - gaming companies Mojang and King, and telephony group Skype – are now in US hands. The complaints by Spotify, which in June 2015 was valued at US$8.5 billion (A$11 billion), are echoed by many other European start-ups –that their governments don’t help them expand to take on global rivals. This requires urgent action, otherwise Stockholm and Sweden will lose in global competition.” “Success requires that you constantly change and act immediately. Thousands of Spotify jobs could go to the U.S. “But at the same time, we cannot magically remove the political obstacles. “We love Sweden and believe that this is basically the best environment for us,” they wrote. Swedish education lags behind in teaching IT and programming to younger children, especially to girls.Įk and Lorentzon further contend that high taxes on staff stock options sees an executive brain-drain to the US and Germany which have lower taxes on such options. Ek and Lorentzon argue that cities like New York, London and Singapore are also expensive but do have more places for its executives to rent. The waiting time for a rental apartment is ten times and house prices have tripled in the last twenty years.

House rentals and sales are strictly held by housing commissions and are strained by unprecedented immigration. In an open letter to Swedish politicians posted on the website Medium, Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon complained that it is difficult to draw the best and the brightest to its headquarters because of Sweden’s lack of rental and purchase housing, its schools dropping in global ranking, and high taxes on staff stock options. Spotify incidentally also employs 1,354 in nearly 30 offices around the world. But attracting high tech professionals to its 850-strong team in Stockholm (made up of executives from 48 countries) is a problem. It plans to expand its workforce by “thousands” in the next few years and has put strategies in place to draw more users and subscribers.

Spotify martin lorentzon