New Books in Economics18 Feb 2021

S. Carlsson and J. Leijonhufvud, "The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance" (Diversion Books, 2021)

Fifteen years ago in Stockholm, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon had a big idea. The music industry was playing a desperate game of whack-a-mole with piracy via file sharing but this was proving as hopeless as the War on Drugs. Why not, they thought, use the new torrenting technologies to bring piracy in from the cold and make themselves rich in the process? In 2006, they founded Spotify with a handful of engineers, no licences and no revenue. Today, Spotify is the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service with 345 million users and a market capitalization of $60 billion. How did the shy computer nerd and hyperactive investor tame hostile music labels and withstand competition from US tech giants more than ten times their size? Still struggling to achieve sustained profitability in cut-throat market segments, will Ek’s latest foray into podcasting eventually free Spotify of its dependency on the music labels or suffer the same fate as Spotify TV? The Spotify Play: How CEO and Founder Daniel Ek Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon in the Race for Audio Dominance (Diversion Books, 2021) is the new English-language update of Spotify Untold – their 2019 Swedish business biography – Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud put Europe’s only tech giant under the microscope using information gleaned from interviews more than 80 sources and a mountain of public and private documents. The book has been translated into 15 languages and will soon be turned into a Netflix Originals miniseries. Sven Carlsson is a technology reporter at Swedish Radio and and Jonas Leijonhufvud a business journalist at Di Digital. *The authors own book recommendations are Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac (W. W. Norton, 2019) and Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe (William Collins, 2018). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Global Advisors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(1561)

Oli Mould, "Postcapitalist cities: Towards a common urban future" (Manchester UP, 2026)

What is the future for cities? In Postcapitalist Cities: Towards a common urban future (Manchester University Press, 2026) Oli Mould, a Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway...

9 Aug 40min

Andres Saenz de Sicilia, "Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society" (Brill, 2024)

Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society is the latest book from Dr Andres Saenz De Sicilia, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern Uni...

7 Aug 44min

Joe Ngai and Nick Leung, "The Next China Is Still China: An Insider's Playbook for Winning in the New Era" (Scribner, 2026)

What’s going on in the Chinese economy? China reported GDP growth of just 4.3% last quarter. Consumption is sluggish, exports are booming, electronics manufacturers and chipmakers are reporting huge p...

30 Juli 56min

Robert Lee Maril, "Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity" (U Oklahoma Press, 2026)

In Oklahoma, one out of every six residents is poor. One in five children lives in poverty and faces food insecurity. In Hungry Oklahoma: Confronting Poverty and Food Insecurity (U Oklahoma Press, ...

30 Juli 35min

Adam Y. Liu, "Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy. In 1978 China had no commercial banks. Today it commands the wor...

28 Juli 57min

Lana Swartz on Digital Money and Digital Cultures of Money

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lana Swartz, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Shannon Mid-Career at the University of Virginia, where she runs the Digital Cultures and Economies ...

27 Juli 1h 24min

Toby Miller and Joan Pedro Carañana, "Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)

Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico ...

26 Juli 44min

Andrew Flachs, "Feeding the World as If People Mattered: How Small Farms Produce Value Beyond Yields" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Backyard gardens flush with cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers where bees buzz and chickens scratch. Beyond, a forest filled with blackberries and jewelweed. Inspired by childhood memories of his gra...

24 Juli 49min