Do we like them?Do we like Daniel Ek?
Our score: 5 out of 10. No harmful words of his own turned up, but a contested military-AI bet, a Rogan row and thin verified good deeds keep this in the middle.
Ek is the Swedish co-founder of Spotify, the app that turned how the world listens to music upside down. He ran it as CEO until the end of 2025, then moved to executive chairman, with Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström taking over as co-CEOs. The reporting we could open is thin on his early life, so this card is mostly about what he's done as a boss and an investor.
The story that follows him around is Helsing. In June 2025 his investment firm Prima Materia led a €600 million round in the Munich defence company, valuing it at €12 billion, and TechCrunch reported the firm has moved from AI software into building strike drones and aircraft. In the press release Ek said there was “an urgent need for investments in advanced technologies that ensure its strategic autonomy.” That's his argument: Europe has to be able to defend itself.
Plenty of artists weren't having it. Massive Attack, Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, Hotline TNT and Sylvan Esso pulled their music from Spotify, and Massive Attack wrote “Enough is more than enough. Another way is possible.” Helsing said misinformation was circulating about where its tech is used, and said it is for European deterrence and defence against Russia in Ukraine. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a defence of democracies or as a musician's money funding weapons.
On the harm check, we found no words from Ek against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. The sore spots are platform decisions. In 2022, over Joe Rogan and COVID misinformation, Ek wrote that Spotify had “a critical role to play in supporting creator expression”, then published its platform rules and added a COVID notice to podcasts about the virus. Spotify also ran US immigration agency recruitment ads in 2025, defending them as part of a government campaign that didn't break its ad policies. That was a company call, not something we found in his own words.
On the recent stuff, nothing brand new has turned up lately beyond the changing of the guard. Spotify told Rolling Stone, as reported by Music Feeds in January 2026, that the ICE ad campaign had ended at the close of 2025. The artist boycotts and the grumbling about streaming payouts haven't gone away, and Ek stays on as chairman.
The good stuff is harder to pin down than the controversy. We couldn't open a source for charity or philanthropy from him, so we won't claim any. What we can point to is a response to the Rogan row that put the rules in the open and put health information next to COVID podcasts, even if critics wanted more. He has also been a major backer of European start-ups, but that's business, not kindness.