[bad_haircut72]

If the cops hadnt also aggressively pursued people "stealing" music (a bullshit proposition to begin with) Spotify would not have won. For most people avoiding a potentially big fine, even if the chance is small, tips the balance into just paying a few bucks (which is itself a huge price concession from the music industry, who would love to charge what CDs used to cost) - but they cant, that would tip the balance back into piracy

[jlundberg]

True that the full win was due to copyright enforcement by various actors.

However, in the early days of Spotify the ”play any song with a click” was pure magic and nothing piracy could compete with.

A fun anecdote from that time is also that basically the whole Spotify catalogue was full of pirated music — they had not yet secured any music rights and I personally thought they never would succeed with that.

[axpvms]

The early days of napster felt like that (with a diminished experience due to lower speed connections). Not to take anything away from your point.

[jlundberg]

Yeah, I agree. Having one place with a huge music library and downloads in parts of minutes was magic.. :)

[hollerith]

Which police force was involved in that? In the US, it was the RIAA using private investigators to find people to sue.