Spotify History

Spotify is a multiplatform application of Swedish origin created in the mid-first decade of 2000 by web designer and entrepreneur Daniel Ek. It began its history as an application for computers in 2008 and a year later presented the mobile and dynamic version for smartphones. After signing a contract with numerous record labels such as Sony BMG, Hollywood Records, Warner Music, and Universal Music, among others, Spotify launched into the conquest of the music world by expanding its business and including services such as access to specialized magazines and other related applications. With the musical field.

Consolidated as one of the most important applications in the music industry, Spotify has managed to connect with its users maintaining the freemium model (free and paid) and facilitating its use through alliances with important social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.)

DANIEL EK AND THE SPOTIFY BEGINNINGS

After starting his career as an entrepreneur at age fourteen, Daniel Ek, creator of Spotify began a new bet in the online marketing business with Advertigo (2005), a company that he successfully managed until its sale to the international giant Tradedoubler in 2006. It was at that time when the Spotify project began to take shape with the support of Martin Lorentzon, founder of Tradedoubler. Ek quickly convinced Lorentzon of the potential of his new project and this without hesitation gave his investment for the application to be created. While discussing the name of the new project, Lorentzon, and Ek, they stayed with Spotify, because their sound and meaning pleased them (spot: place – identify: identity).

Once the name was chosen, Ek and Lorentzon, registered the brand and began working on the project with the support of a group of designers and engineers, including uTorrent developer and creator, Ludvig Strigeus. After a few months of work the application was completed in 2006, however, its launch was postponed due to negotiations with the record companies and the licensing, so it took two years to launch the application.

Spotify was launched on October 7, 2008, as a streaming music playback application for computers, available at that time only in some European countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, Spain, and France. Since then users could access an extensive music library without downloading anything. At that time the application had its well-known free account, however, it could only be accessed if invited, otherwise, a paid subscription would have to be made. By changing times and with the emergence of smartphones, Spotify understood the need to expand and reinvent itself, building its mobile application in 2009, in addition to the Premium and Unlimited modes.

GROWTH AND CONSOLIDATION

After gaining popularity in a few years and becoming one of the most used new applications, Spotify landed in the US market, signing a contract with important record labels, which understood the importance of being in the app and the potential it had to spread to Your artists In 2011, it was established in the United States and began to compete with recognized and important music applications such as iTunes, which it has currently surpassed in number of active users, Amazon Music, Pandora and the newly created Tidal (2014). Shortly after starting his adventure in the United States, Ek announced that the application would change and diversify by becoming a platform that could host various applications related to the world of music, because as he pointed out: Music goes beyond of the music.

Since then the application has become multiplatform in which third-party applications such as TuneWiki (letters), CrowdAlbum (photography) and Billboard (lists and charts) are included, among many others. Also, several extensions and options were created that personalize the use of the app, so that each user can enjoy and explore the world of music in the app in the way they like.

For this same period, the platform surprised users with the integration of specialized channels and magazines such as Rolling Stone, Moi, and others that jumped to the platform pleasing users with a variety of music lists for all tastes. Three years after becoming a platform, Spotify eliminated the limit of hours of listening for free users, including short advertisements that cannot be skipped. That same year, the app opted for marketing, sales and user experience by partnering with Topspin and Starbucks, being the first music app that has space in places like cafes.

After consolidating itself as one of the most-used apps of recent times, Spotify created various alliances with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, among others, allowing its users to access the app and share its content in various ways, thus improving the user experience.

Since 2016, the app has managed to connect with its users through various lists designed for all kinds of tastes, with which users can discover new artists, new songs, the most listened to songs and others that they had forgotten. Some of the most listened to lists are Discover Weekly, Billboard Hot 100, Hipster International, Digster HIP HOP HITS !, Billboard R & B / Hip-Hop Songs, Top Trap Latino, among others. However, it should be ruled out that the different extensions that the app currently has facilitated and personalize its use, improving the user experience. Some of the most important extensions are Forgotify, The Set Listener and Vidfish.

PRESENT

The success achieved with the renewal of the application led its creator to think about expanding further entering the stock market in 2018 with a market value of $ 26.5 billion. Since then, the app has not stopped growing and innovating, improving the user experience and consolidating itself as one of the most important apps of the moment. Facing tough opponents like Tidal, Pandora, and iTunes, in addition to the voices that announce their downfall. Currently, Spotify has more than 207 million users and it is available in 65 countries in Europe, America, Asia, and Oceania.

Louis Vuitton Biography

Louis Vuitton (August 4, 1821 – February 25, 1892) businessman and fashion designer. Founder of the leather goods brand Louis Vuitton. He was born in Anchay, France. His parents were Xavier Vuitton, a farmer, and his mother Coronne Vuitton, a woman who dedicated herself to making hats. At the age of 16, Louis gets a job as a trunk manufacturer, an occupation that allowed him to move to Paris.

In 1854, he opened a shop in Paris at number 4 on the rue Neuve-des-Capucines that would become one of the reference brands at the end of the 20th century. Subsequently, he served as luggage provider for Empress Eugenie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III. His biggest goal in his life project was to create a leather bag workshop, he was passionate about the design of these items. So, with his savings, he opened the Atelier in 1859, a workshop of handmade leather bags and suitcases. This place was very symbolic and special for him because his child grew up there: Georges Vuitton, his mother was Clemence-Emilie Parriaux.

His workshop was very successful and popular because of the exclusivity of the designs and the quality of the materials used in his work, Vuitton became a benchmark for luxury leather goods. In 1885, he opened a store in London. At the time, he developed the Tumbler lock that made travel trunks much safer. In 1867, he won the bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. Empress Eugenia de Montijo remained her best client, her support would be crucial for her commercial development.

Louis Vuitton died on February 5, 1892, while in Asnières-Sur-Seine, France. His son followed in his footsteps but did not continue with the company, which did not end because it was commanded by other people. Its success was such that decades later the company had 225 workers. In 1896, Louis Vuitton company designed the monogram canvas with which it differs from other brands. Georges patented the Louis Vuitton lock, a revolutionary and very effective system that could not be opened even by the great American illusionist Harry Houdini.

Christian Dior Biography

Christian Dior (January 21, 1905 – October 24, 1957) fashion designer. Dior grew up in a bourgeois family. He studied at the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris. But, from a very young age, he felt more interest in fashion than in academic matters. So, he started working in the fashion industry. He began making sketches for Robert Piguet, a well-known Parisian designer at that time.

He was a fashion designer for Agnès and Schiaparelli, and at the same time he stood out as a model designer at the Piguet house. He was responsible for launching the New Look, a style that contained dresses with narrow shoulders and mid-length skirts. This style became popular in the United States.

The so-called haute couture was characterized by its high quality in terms of design and production. The Haute Couture Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1868, was created to prevent and punish plagiarism of designs, a very common issue before this organization was established. A final stage of haute couture emerged; It had elegant and sculptural lines. At the end of the year 1950, many of the haute couture houses closed before the advance of ready-to-wear. Christian Dior was one of the most prestigious designers of this line.

Dior traveled and directed an art gallery. In 1931, his mother died of cancer and the family business went bankrupt. The situation for Dior worsened because he contracted tuberculosis. As a surprise, he had to live off the few savings and the help of his loved ones, he began selling sketches with his designs to newspapers and magazines. Everything changed when in 1946, a textile entrepreneur, Marcel Boussac, helped him to open a sewing house in Paris. In this way, his haute couture firm was born, which bore his name.

Twenty years passed and his business expanded to 15 countries and hired more than 2000 employees. Likewise, it diversified the business towards other luxury products, such as perfumes or jewelry, this decision was addressed successfully. Especially in New York, it was very famous, a city where he opened a branch of Dior. His first collection, the Corolle line. After the strong economic crisis that World War II had brought with it, Christian Dior knew how to decipher in his clothes the needs of recovery and optimism of the Americans, giving a new impulse to the fashion and aesthetics of the 50’s.

Dior’s luxurious designs caused a sensation. Their suits were adapted to the female figure, exaggerating it: flared and voluminous mid-leg skirts, with a large amount of flight, with tulle liners that demanded more than twenty meters of fabric, arose from tight and rigid bodies of a small waist. This French designer managed to complement his styles with cocked hats, chokers and stiletto shoes. His style was characterized and admired for being glamorous and feminine.

The press baptized this trend with the name of New Look, was quickly accepted by American and European women, eager to renew their wardrobe of the 40s: quite sparse and strict, without emotion. Other geniuses of sewing, such as Jacques Fath or Hubert de Givenchy, had a valuable contribution in Dior’s New Look. The economic recovery of the 50s and the consequent enthusiasm was expressed in a consumerist fever, a need to express waste of creativity and glamor, in short, a real golden age in all its manifestations.

Although the New Look fascinated many women, others criticized the extravagant use of materials and artificiality. Many women showed their outrage and made demonstrations at the doors of Dior, although these demonstrations only managed to give him more publicity. Unfortunately, Dior died at the young age of 52 due to cardiac arrest, left a great legacy for incalculable fashion, but also a feeling of dissatisfaction. The Dior House did not stop, it continued thanks to the efforts of great designers, such as Yves Saint-Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré and John Galliano. Dior currently has lines of cosmetics, perfumes, jewelry, and household items. Its reputation and quality remain intact.

Sergey Brin biography

Sergei Brin (August 21, 1973) computer scientist and creator of the Internet search engine Google. He was born in Moscow, Soviet Union. Sergei Brin was born into a Jewish family that enjoyed a well-off position but due to their religious beliefs, the Russian government prevented them from certain possibilities. His father, Mikhail Brin, was a mathematician, and his mother, Eugenia Brin, worked in the field of science when Sergei was six years old they decided to move to the United States to find better living conditions.

When they arrived, their mother landed a major position in NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and her father obtained a position as professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland, she also decided to change her name, due to North American anti-communist policies, Michael Brin. He entered to study at the Paint Branch Montessori School. His parents were very attentive in the education of his son, who demonstrated a great ability for mathematics. Throughout his school years, he was a student with excellent grades.

Upon graduation, he enrolled at the University of Maryland to study Mathematics and Computer Science. In the stipulated time, 1993, he received his degree with honors and applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation. He began his postgraduate studies at Stanford University. Simultaneously, he started working at Wolfram Research, the creator of Mathematica. While in the winter of 1998, he began to develop an idea to create a search engine for the internet, the idea was developed with the help of Larry Page. His great motivation was the inefficiency and the multiple errors of the search engines existing at that time.

They held several meetings with brilliant people in this field, and they met Andy Bechtolsheim, an investor from Sun Microsystems. They decided to present their idea, they also made a quick demonstration and they got that, without thinking twice, Bechtolsheim extended a check worth 100,000 dollars to start the project. Although with this amount achieved only the beginning of the project, the young people full of enthusiasm began to get other economic support and various sources of income. As a result, Brin and Page managed to get two of the most relevant US venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, to agree to finance their idea. They then collected 25 million dollars. The project was still ongoing.

At first, they thought of the word googol to baptize their search engine, a term invented by the mathematician Edward Kasner to name the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Then they changed their name to Google. We must mention that Yahoo! played an essential role in driving Google. Yahoo! collaborated encouraging the creation of his own search engine, the pair of colleagues began to offer in its popular portal the possibility of searching through that engine. For the year 2003, Google swept daily searches, had about 112 million, compared to Yahoo !, which only supported approximately 42 million.

The reason was that Google was more effective, its presentation was much more attractive, and allowed more fixed searches. Brin and Page decided to add new possibilities to the dozen functions related to their search engine and the continuous experimentation with many others. Something really innovative was that Google allowed the users to easily locate images, newsgroups and searches using the Open Directory thematic directory tool, an international volunteer project that catalogs web pages by hand.

After a few years, thanks to the popularity of Google, colleagues received a Webby, a prize. Google was inserting new services every time, such as the search engine of products on sale in the Google network; the product search within mail order catalogs; a language translator, among other new features. When the new millennium began Google began to think about the modification and restructuring of its building located in the Californian region of Mountain View, more than a hundred employees worked in an unusual environment.

So they adopted as a philosophy: to offer a pleasant place to work and with that to motivate and retain employees. Among the renovations are yoga classes, massages, bars, free ice cream machines, food prepared with organic food by two chefs, a ping-pong table, swimming pool, two pianos, and hockey meetings twice a week. The goal of Google at that time was especially to create better search engines, extract information from unstructured sources and databases of long collections of text and scientific information.

Brin has authored more than a dozen articles in top-level academic journals and has also been a lecturer in various international academic forums, most of them are business and technology, in 2002, Brin was proclaimed “Young Innovator Who Will Create the Future” by Technology magazine Review This publication was edited by the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). What this couple achieved, especially at Brin’s initiative, was impressive. At present everyone knows and has used Google.

Although it has been censored by some countries of totalitarian politics like China. According to computer experts, Google is “the saving medicine” for most Internet users. One of its characteristics is the speed and effectiveness. Now, its design is simple and direct, and without incorporating advertising in its pages that generate distraction in the users. We must accept that, Internet users have preferred this search engine to the detriment of other, earlier, more popular ones. Brin has advanced several projects, along with Larry Page, who are looking for ways to solve the problem of global energy and environmental hazards through Google’s philanthropic area called Google.org.

Nik Powell biography

Nik Powell (November 4, 1950) businessman and co-founder of the Virgin Group. He was born in Great Kingshill, Buckinghamshire, England. Powell studied at the Longacre School and then left school because his family moved to Little Malvern. Then, he entered a small Catholic high school called St. Richard’s. He always showed a great ability for mathematical questions and for writing. Then he attended high school at Ampleforth College a high school located in North Yorkshire. Upon graduation, he entered the University of Sussex. But a year later he retired and began operating a mail order company, a small record store, and a recording studio.

The intentions to grow were increased, so the partners established Virgin Records in 1972. Little by little, the record began to bear fruit until years later it was recognized as one of the main record labels in the United Kingdom. In the year 1992, it was sold to EMI. During this time, Powell and Stephen Woolley came together to start the project that had as its object the foundation of a production company called Palace Productions. She was responsible for the production of The Company of Wolves (1984), Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992). But, although they achieved great things, the company collapsed in 1992 due to a series of inconclusive contracts and debts.

Without leaving his dreams behind, Powell began working in the film industry this time with Scala Productions, responsible for the production of Fever Pitch, Twenty Four Seven, Last Orders, B. Monkey and Ladies in Lavender. Since then he has been the president of this company. Simultaneously accepted the position of director of the National School of Film and Television in 2003. This decision was very controversial and caused great controversy because there were many people from academia who claimed that Powell was not prepared for the position. For a few years, he received the support of his wife Merrill Tomassi, from whom he divorced.

Later he married the singer Sandie Shaw, Powell was very important in the relaunching of her artistic career. They had two children, Amie and Jack, and they divorced in the 1990s. The distinguished career in the media industry, first in music as a co-founder of Virgin Records and later as a producer of several award-winning films allowed Nik to handle with excellence the School and be welcomed and respected by his students, the above has also gained more popularity to the institution.

Nik has not left his close ties with the leaders of the music and film industry, and also served as a trustee of BAFTA, where he chaired the Film Committee. While chairing the NFTS, Nik has been responsible for a remarkable transformation of the School that has grown in infrastructure and in importance and quality. It has been recognized as one of the best film schools in the world and now he can welcome more students because its academic offer is wider: masters, diploma, certificates and short courses in the film, television and games industries.

In recent years, the school received its accreditation from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Being then an accredited institution of higher education. A few years ago the NFTS was equipped with two buildings and a new digital television studio 4K. The president of the School has extended and made public his thanks to the work of Powell, and to the great achievements that the students of this school have made. They have been winners of several awards, such as four Oscar nominations, seven BAFTA and 10 Cilect Global Student Film awards.

Many NFTS graduate students are working in the best film, television, and gaming industries in the United Kingdom. But, after 14 years under the direction of the school, Powell decided to retire from this position in June 2017. Although he resigned from his position, he affirmed that he will continue supporting everything he can to his beloved institution. Powell appeared on the Queen’s 2018 New Year’s Honors list. Powell received an OBE. His partner Richard Branson has also recognized his work and admires his work. He also works with novelist and screenwriter Deborah Moggach.

After his retirement he realized, against all odds, that if he could get ahead in the role of academic director of such a prestigious institution, he could also found Virgin, enter the world of cinema, among other things. During his time as director, he took great pains to expand scholarships for students who do not have the economic capacity, and also encouraged the entry of women into the institution. And finally, he was very efficient with financing from large film industries. Powell is an inspiring man and was an important figure for the NFTS.