How a simple mistake turned into the brand name of an 8 billion dollar company..
The Swedish music streaming service, Spotify has been a huge part in the changing landscape of the music industry. The service now boasts over 150 million paying subscribers and is thought to have a total of more than 300 million active users. It’s fair to say that Spotify is leading the streaming revolution and changing the way we all listen to music but how did it end up being called Spotify in the first place?
The official ‘meaning’ or ‘story’ behind the name is that it stems from the words SPOT and IDENTIFY but in truth this story was fabricated after the name had already been decided on. Spotify founder Daniel EK has revealed that the name was actually the result of a happy mistake..
In truth the co-founders of Spotify were sitting in Daniel’s Stockholm flat trying to think of a catchy name for their new music streaming start-up idea. After tossing around various names and even trying online ‘jargon-generators’, Martin Lorentzon (the other co-founder of Spotify), shouted an idea for a name and Daniel mis-heard what he said..
What Daniel heard (wrong) was ‘SPOTIFY’. The pair then Googled the word to make sure the domain names were available and no one else was using the name. They then quickly went ahead and registered the name. Now 11 years later, that name is intrinsically connected with music and the company is worth more than $8 Billion.
Isn’t it amazing what can come from a simple mistake? Many music producers and artists credit much of their best work to experimenting and making mistakes. I know a lot of the progress we have made at Soundplate Records has been a direct result of mistakes we have made along the way. Don’t be scared of making mistakes, embrace them and learn from them. You never know where they might lead.
Brand names and identities are crucial for businesses and music artists alike. We covered the importance of branding for DJ’s in a recent article. It’s also important that you can own whatever artist or brand name you decide upon. A quick Google search will help you find out if a name is already in use. We also suggest checking social media sites like Soundcloud, Facebook and Twitter to ensure you can own your social handles, like @Soundplate on Twitter or FB.com/Soundplate on Facebook. Once you have all of that locked down you should go ahead and create your artist page on Soundplate Clicks as this can become the central hub for your music marketing.
Once you have settled on a name, make sure you register the .com domain name. To find a domain name, use one of the services listed here.
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