Silicon Valley and, more generally, the digital revolution are an infinite casket of exciting and untold stories. Stories of misunderstood and stubborn geniuses, of courageous visions and short-sighted resistance, of millionaire ascents and ruinous falls, stories of success and betrayal. Stories of technology, yes, of course, but stories in which the human component plays a fundamental role.
For some time Netflix she sensed this narrative potential and started producing miniseries on the theme: first the world of Facebook with the revealing The Social Dilemma; and then Google seen through the eyes of a German startup that the Californian giant had literally blown “a million dollar code” to make Google Earth.
Now comes The Playlist, the story of Spotify, which takes place in Sweden but has all the ingredients of Silicon Valley: in particular the culture of startups founded by a visionary “nerd” who aim to overturn the functioning of an entire industrial sector, in this case the music industry.
The story told by The Playlist
So, we are at the beginning of the 2000s, an earthquake had just happened for music: first Napster and then Pirate Bay had created websites from which users could download all the music they wanted for free. For record companies, that model was the beginning of the end.
In this context, Daniel Ek arrives, a talented young programmer who, after selling his first startup for ten million Swedish kronor, asks himself: why can’t we also have a global enterprise here like in Silicon Valley? The crisis in the music market was a huge opportunity to create the best digital platform for distributing music, allowing everyone to make some money.
The lesser known story
This is the known story, but The Playlist is not limited to the celebration of a startupper who became a billionaire, but tells exactly what it takes to achieve success.
To do this, the same story is seen from six points of view, one for each episode: there is the vision of Daniel Ek, of course, at the beginning; but then, to reach the finish line, it was necessary to find a generous and courageous financing partner; a head of legal affairs capable of closing deals with record companies; a record company ready to seize the opportunity to reinvent and save an industry; and a programmer, so brilliant, capable of realizing Ek’s impossible claim of having a “player” capable of playing immediately after our click, without any latency (to do so, he explains in the series, he will have to modify one of the fundamental protocols on which the Internet is based).
The last episode and the remuneration of the artists
The last episode has as its protagonist a singer, a childhood friend of Ek, who despite a decent success, with the proceeds of Spotify is unable even to pay the rent of the house: it is the very serious theme of how the huge profits that Spotify generates and the condition of millions of minor artists.
In the end, in fact, music did not become free for everyone as it was said: Spotify was the tool to bring the old music industry into the digital world; and along the way Ek has dismissed all those who brought him to the finish line. The series finale is set in the near future. Interesting, no spoilers on how it will go.
But ultimately, mission accomplished: The Playlist works. Now we look forward to someone to tell the Netflix story.