[surround]

Wikipedia says

  Ek's initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.

So yes, they were always intending to get revenue from ads. And yes, the initial pitch included other types of media too. But I don't think we can call Spotify "an ad platform" that "never actually cared about music" any more than we could call Ars Technica "an ad platform that never actually cared about tech news."

[machomaster]

Did you know that Ars in Ars Technica stands for Ass, showing how badly they really thought of technology?

/s

[PokemonNoGo]

Sarcasm doesn't mean bad jokes.

[machomaster]

And this is exactly why I had to use /s. Because some people would not understand that it was weitten tongue-in-cheek, while some others would fail to see the larger context and confuse my sarcasm with a simple joke (sure, as a joke it is bad; and that's precicely because it was optimized to be sarcastic, not joke-funny).