'It ultimately made people realize that music was worth paying for': Spotify's Sten Garmark on how the streaming giant created an entirely new business model, and its mission to convince users that 'there was something better than free'
THE SO WHAT
Spotify spent 20 years teaching consumers to pay for what they thought should be free — that's the playbook AI-native products will need as open models and free assistants flood the market. If your AI product is just 'better than free,' assume ARPU compression unless you reframe the category the way streaming did for music.
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