It was also, most importantly, absolutely free.

But, hey, it was pretty convenient and low risk, all things considered. Sure, download speeds could be painfully slow, the programs were a bit janky, and that album you pirated might turn out to be low-quality, incomplete, or covertly smuggling a virus along with it. With peer-to-peer technology, all it took was an internet connection and some software, and you could be moments away from nabbing a song for yourself, with almost no chance of getting punished for it. No longer did you have to physically steal records, rip radio onto a cassette, or even burn a CD. At this point, music piracy wasn’t a new phenomenon, but it was a newly popular one. And, of course, please check out the podcast yourself to hear even more about how Spotify became, well, Spotify. So read on to learn how Spotify had to completely rethink peer-to-peer (P2P) networking to improve our user experience, and why everyone needs a bit of magic to stand out from their competitors. In the first episode of our podcast series, “ Spotify: A Product Story”, host and Chief R&D Officer Gustav Söderström walks through how the app (and Spotify in general) came to be - and the product lessons you should take away from that journey. But sitting at the core is our flagship product, the one that started it all: the desktop app. TL DR Over the years, Spotify’s brand has expanded to encompass a number of products, from mobile apps to web players to car things.

Download spotify desktop app