There are millions of people who consume music illegally every month. Just getting them into a legal service will make the music industry way bigger than it's ever been before.

Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.

We led with our conviction rather than rational, because rational said it was impossible.

I had two passions growing up - one was music, one was technology. I tried to play in a band for a while, but I was never talented enough to make it. And I started companies. One day came along and I decided to combine the two - and there was Spotify.

It disturbed me that the music industry had gone down the drain, even though people were listening to more music than ever and from a greater diversity of artists.

With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company.

In order for a service to be social, you've really got to start from the ground up. The fact that almost a third of the U.S. population have even heard of Spotify is really because they've seen it on Facebook and friends have been sharing.