Tribune | ‘The Playlist’: the story of Spotify and its lawyer

‘The Playlist’ is the new Netflix miniseries that tells the story of the music company in streaming Spotify and thus joins the new trend of series that tell the stories of recent technology startups, such as ‘Wecrashed’, ‘Super Pumped: the battle for Uber’ or ‘The Dropout’, which have been released this year on television And they are all extremely interesting.

‘The Playlist’ offers a number of variations on the previously mentioned series. In the first place, the miniseries only has six chapters, each one adopting the point of view of one of the protagonists of the story and parading, in this order, the founder, the director of the music industry, the lawyer, the technologist, the investor and the artist. This original approach allows the story to move forward, but also to revisit it from the different visions of each of the participants. In this way, it enhances interest in the series because all business success stories are usually polyhedral.

‘The Playlist’ tells the story of Daniel Ek (Edvin Endre), a classic serial entrepreneur looking for funding and the right programmers to make his dream of offering music on streaming and free of charge. It is an almost obsessive dream that leads him to first confront the music industry personified in the CEO of Sony in Sweden, Per Sundin (Ulf Stenberg), and then have to ally with those same companies in order to have access to the rights. of your music and be able to play it. Finally, the series asks if this model has been truly more democratic for musicians and artists who fill the application with content with their works, being extremely interesting the last chapter dedicated to the story of an artist Bobby T(Janice Kayma), partner of youth of the protagonist and now an activist against Spotify in defense of the rights of musicians.

It is extremely interesting the vision about the music industry, how piracy was undermining its financial foundations and how Spotify intends to become a technological innovation that not only solves that problem but also democratizes and makes access to music free.

All the legal issues surrounding the birth and growth of a startup that first becomes a unicorn and then a listed company are present in the series: the initial investment, the search for financing, the protection of the idea, the relationship with investors, the difficulty of finding and retaining talent and the need to make the business scalable and sustainable in order to continue accessing financing.

However, one of the chapters that catches my attention the most is the one dedicated to the company’s lawyer, Petra Hansem, played by Gizem Erdogan, who makes it possible with her intelligent work to resolve the conflict between the big music producers and Spotify. Petra’s negotiating profile, focused on business and solving the company’s deadlock, the sincerity with which she speaks to the founder and the management team about the possibilities of the startup or the generation of alternatives to make the company profitable (hers is the idea of ​​establishing another premium or paid application together with the free application) makes all of us who work as lawyers en casa we feel identified with the excellent lawyer.

The role that a good legal advisor plays in the early and critical stages of the startup is perfectly reflected in the series and, in real practice, it can be the differential element for not making mistakes or taking shortcuts that hinder the future of the company. .

‘The Playlist’ is not only well narrated, edited and acted, but it is also entertaining and offers a very complete vision of the phases through which a startup runs to achieve success or business maturity.

Jose Luis Luceno Olivaprofessor at Loyola Masters

We want to say thanks to the author of this write-up for this incredible material

Tribune | ‘The Playlist’: the story of Spotify and its lawyer