The Playlist (2022) s01e04 Episode Script
The Coder
1
Code. It can be beautiful.
When I learned to program,
I saw that it was pure.
No ambiguities.
Nothing to interpret, nothing to convey.
It just is.
And for me, it's part of my DNA.
The world we live in is incomplete.
Fragile and blurry.
In the binary world,
there are only ones and zeros.
That's perfection.
All you need to get started is an idea.
And then slowly, one command at a time,
you create something new.
Something pure and true that,
didn't exist before.
Something that never lies or
pretends to be something it isn't.
A universe out of nothing.
You take the ugly chaotic world we live in
and you make it perfect.
Andreas?
You were going to show us
the latest updates.
Anyone could have answered
their questions. In their sleep.
No one is interested in my ideas.
We are interested in your ideas.
But we're also interested
in making a profit.
Yeah, I know. Check this out.
What is this?
I've started constructing
a more immersive open-world experience.
This can give our users something
to aspire to, to dream about, to create
Well, our users are
12 and 13 year old girls. Get it?
All they have to do is play with dolls
and buy our fucking add-ons.
Fame, fashion and friends, Andreas.
Don't forget that.
Oh, sorry This is Daniel.
Daniel's going to be a consultant here.
Daniel gets business. Listen to him, okay?
Hmm?
I like what you said, it was nice.
Yeah, but who cares?
- He just wants to sell add-ons.
- Can I see?
I just thought a tech start-up
would be different.
That they would be interested
in some new ideas. Take some risks.
This is awesome. How did you get the dolls
to react so quickly?
I've built a new layer,
so now there's a feedback loop
to anticipate what users want
before they want it.
Okay.
Yeah well, don't worry.
The boss hates it, so I'll just delete it.
Why? It's brilliant. If Mattias doesn't
appreciate it, that's his problem.
- Except that he's the boss.
- So? Then why are you still here?
If you want to be creative, quit this damn
job, do your own thing. Be your own boss.
People like me just don't run businesses.
We consult, advise, maybe are CTOs.
Says who? I just did it.
Started a tech company with only coders,
sold it for ten million.
Just think about it.
This is nice.
What are you reading?
The Gutenberg Galaxy.
Marshall McLuhan. What's it about?
It's about
how technology made it possible
for knowledge to spread in new ways.
You know before, there was no point in
learning to read as there were no books.
That's true.
But then a whole new wave
of information came along and so
Well, everyone can have access to it
if they wanted to.
So access made people consume more?
Exactly.
People like Mattias will never get it.
They just think they get it,
but we've grown up with technology.
It's been a part of us since we
were kids, before we could even speak.
We can't let them decide
what we should do with it.
Check this out.
This is a streaming system for free music.
This is exactly what you're talking about.
A way to listen
to every song released,
so that everyone in the world
can have access to all music.
Nice. But you know
there's already Pirate Bay?
Sure, but give me a step by step guide
on how to download a song from Pirate Bay.
Oh, it's easy.
You just go to the website
search for the torrent you want,
download it, open it in a client
There's different files, right? So first,
you have to go through them one by one,
see which one you want
Yes. True. So then you sort out what
you don't want, it downloads
Yeah, if it downloads and isn't a virus.
Then you have to decide which
folder it goes into, what to name it,
how to list the songs
so they play in the right order,
according to an artist or an album
and all of these you have to store
on your own hard drive.
This is what I'm talking about.
All this enthusiasm,
everything Pirate Bay built,
we're going to take to a whole new level.
The world needs
freedom from record companies.
and something way better than Pirate Bay.
At first, it was just an idea
It's a beautiful thought, but won't work.
Investors will force you to compromise
until it's no longer beautiful
Good thing I'm the investor then.
I'll put everything I earn into this.
Every day Every day
that we stand up to them,
the authorities begin to understand
that we are unstoppable.
Yes!
You know what we're doing here?
We're writing history.
- This is yours?
- Uhn uhn.
Welcome to Spotify headquarters!
This is where we'll build
the world's most beautiful music site.
- And you want me?
- I want you to help me.
I need you to help me build the kind of
company that can create brilliance.
Okay.
Oh, that's Martin. Martin!
Don't worry, he He looks like
one of them, but he's one of us.
Andreas, nice to meet you!
My name is Martin Lorentzon.
Andreas.
I know your boss.
He says you're incredibly good,
but annoying as hell.
We need annoying as hell.
I want people who think in new ways,
who understand that the whole new era
requires whole new approaches.
Welcome aboard.
Welcome aboard?
You are our first employee, CTO.
You'll own more of the company
than anyone except me and Martin.
So how should we design it?
What do you need?
Okay. The coders will sit in the middle.
Everything flows from here,
all the ideas, all the creativity.
We're going to need more ethernet cables,
and ceiling electrical outlets.
And everyone on the team will be equal.
No hierarchy, no cliques and no titles.
If two people think differently, then it
shouldn't matter who has the highest rank.
Best idea wins, no matter what.
So who's going to be on the team?
You have to let me handpick them.
We can't use regular coders.
To make the best site in the world,
we need the elite.
People who would have
never joined a regular start-up.
We need Gunnar Kreitz.
I met him at college, computer science.
He's the best programmer in the world.
And Fredrik Niemelä, a prodigy.
The only one with a team
that could challenge Gunnar's.
Jon Åslund,
Mattias Arrelid, Andreas Mattsson.
We need a great designer, too
Rasmus Andersson would be perfect.
We can create the
world's best coding team.
Like the seven samurai, but coders.
That looks nice!
Oh God, you look so handsome.
Brilliant! Okay, shall we?
There it is! The money shot! The best.
Spotify is about one thing.
Access.
Access gives freedom.
Access makes users
independent from the music industry
And speed. If there's one thing users hate
about Pandora or Last FM, it's buffering.
You don't use Google
because it's the best,
it's because it's the fastest.
If Spotify is
gonna succeed, speed is key.
Don't forget that!
- Okay, access and speed.
- Mhm. Let's do this!
Yes!
When you start programming,
you'll merely notice there's no shortcuts.
You have to dare to get your hands dirty.
A little code under your fingernails.
A computer is like a child
who doesn't know anything yet.
I have to teach them,
and that means everything.
If my instructions are illogical,
incomplete or inadequate,
you will get a bug.
And the bug
may cause the program to crash, severely.
- Come on!
- No
- Oh! Come, yes.
- No
You want to, come on!
Yes, hi.
Would you mind if introduced you
to my good friend Andreas.
He's the quiet type, but his
eyes can speak a thousand words.
Okay. So, what are
his eyes saying right now?
Here's my card, order whatever you want.
Hi
He is Um
Yeah
So
So?
Have you looked
at any congestion control algorithms?
- No.
- No.
And that has to be the worst
pick-up line in entire world.
Eh What
What are you interested in? Beer?
Medical science. I'm a student.
I only work here on the weekends.
Okay. Yeah, right, cell biology.
Uhm mh.
- Okay.
- What can I get you?
What do you think?
Give me something you like.
Okay.
So tell me about cell biology.
The cell is the most remarkable
of all organisms in biology.
Yeah?
It recreates itself, regulates itself.
It's like a little factory that produces
whatever is needed to keep running,
and it renews parts that need to be
replaced, but it kind of services itself.
And if needed, the production
can be changed in an instant.
All the recipes needed to produce
what the factory creates
are sort of encoded in the cell's genome.
And the cool thing about it all is that,
Well, it doesn't need any
blueprints, anything like that.
It just regulates itself and it
takes command of itself.
It's fascinating really, how it all
just continues to work all on its own
That was beautiful.
Thanks.
So
What would you say if
I asked you out sometime?
Khovd? Where the hell is that?
No clue, but we have
to go there To Mongolia.
Okay.
The globe decides. That's the rule, okay?
So, tell me. What were you tech nerds
celebrating at the bar tonight?
A new streaming service.
Is there any action in that?
Actually, there is. I mean,
the record companies and the pirates
They all try to stop us.
Uhm mh.
So Spotify will create
a world without intermediaries.
Where music can flow freely,
like water or electricity.
Where people can upload,
listen to whatever they want.
Uhm mh.
Create, share, whatever they want.
It won't cost a thing.
That was beautiful.
It's done.
Test it.
Now, try something else.
Yeah
Unbelievable!
With help from the whole team,
we've made a smoother, faster system.
It's actually a lot faster now and we've
reduced the delay. So now the searches
It's still too slow.
This is basically a masterpiece.
Why should I care about that?
500 milliseconds is too slow.
Why would I bother clicking on a song
if I have to wait 500 milliseconds for it?
- How long is acceptable?
- Zero!
Zero? That's impossible
and Daniel knew it.
The delay between
when you click on a link on the internet
and when content is sent from a server,
is affected by several factors.
Suddenly, it depends on the
amount of content but also on the
type of internet connection, the workload
on the network not to mention distribution
which is the distance
a cable has to carry data,
I could streamline by adapting the
the structure and finding some shortcuts
but really it's just the amount of content
that you have control over.
Daniel! Look at this, only 12 month's
warranty and it's at 75,000.
That's a colossal amount.
- Andreas!
- Yes?
Okay, here's the deal.
We can't afford to do this on servers.
I built the entire system on servers.
Okay, but we can't afford the amount of
servers we would need to scale up.
You're going to have to
build this as a P2P network.
So Why am I totally speechless right now?
Okay, to explain that, I need to get
a bit technical. Try to keep up now.
If you wanted to build a
streaming service like Spotify in
2006, you really only had two options.
Number one, to use servers.
Okay, I'm server. This is me,
here. I have access to a database.
You can think of it as a big pile of CDs.
My only job is basically to serve you the
songs from these CDs. This is you.
When you ask me to,
I'll go and pick a CD out of the pile,
I'll read the song you want from here,
send it to you, from beginning to the end,
a little at a time
just like how you usually listen
to music, it's lightening fast.
The problem is that it's expensive.
Servers are expensive to buy,
but they're mainly expensive to run.
They use a lot of electricity,
and when they use it, they get
hot, so you need more electricity to run
the fans that cool the servers. Okay.
That's why Daniel asked me a moment ago
to use option number two,
building a peer-to-peer network.
I'll explain that, too.
Okay, so peer-to-peer was the invention
that laid the foundation
for all the services
like Kazaa, Napster, Limewire
and of course Pirate Bay.
Now we don't have a server anymore,
just a bunch of confused users out there
who are somehow connected
to each other via the internet.
All the internet-connected computers
on this network
are each other's equals. They are peers.
Okay. The problem is
that when we lost the server,
we lost contact with the database.
So the whole world's music
is no longer available.
But the users have
a few different records each,
and as long as they're willing
to share with each other,
we have a nice little communist society
on the internet,
but unlike communism,
this idea really works.
Now, when you want to listen a specific
song, you first ask your neighbors,
"Please, do any of you have the song?"
Since there are billions of songs and only
a few neighbors, they'll probably say no.
But they can ask their neighbors,
who ask their neighbors,
until you finally find someone who has
the song and starts sending it to you.
This way, Spotify doesn't have to buy
lots of expensive servers,
but, there is a big disadvantage. See, it
takes an agonizingly long time.
It's a cheap solution,
and definitely a bad one.
Had Daniel been a real coder,
he'd have known that,
and he'd have know that
he was asking me to do the impossible.
He has a tendency to do that.
I'll give it a try.
- Hi!
- Hello
- Hungry?
- Yeah.
Good!
Sorry.
Hello?
You need to get
down here, bring your computer.
What? Why?
Because Per Sundin is here.
It's a chance to pitch to him.
Okay. I have to go.
What? Now?
Yes. Sorry.
Complicate, then they overcompensate ♪
She running back ♪
She got her own ♪
Daniel, I've tried to make it faster, but
I'm working against the very essence of
Yeah, but you can do it. It's all good.
We should let one of the datalogists
check if it's even possible
Andreas, of course it's possible.
If anyone can do it, it's you. Okay?
You're my kind of woman ♪
I should be able
to optimize the search itself.
Great!
But even so, there are ten more layers
that are too slow.
That's him!
Give me your laptop.
Running it, running it, running it
You are ♪
You are, you are ♪
Running it, running it, running it
You are ♪
Free? What the hell makes you
think I'd be interested in free music?
What the hell is wrong
with your generation? Huh?
Music can never be free.
If I get another one
of these fucking pitches,
I'm gonna make it my personal mission
to crush your little shitty company.
You got that?
I hope I've been
very, very, very clear with you.
Just make it fast, Andreas.
I want him to come crawling back.
Did he really throw it on
the ground?
Yeah.
Why?
He is a little unstable right now.
He wants it to be faster.
I don't even know
if it's theoretically possible.
So
Sometimes when the heart
can't pump blood fast enough,
the body finds ways to compensate.
The arteries sort of reshape themselves
to create the pressure
that the circulatory system needs.
So I don't know, but maybe you can
come up with something new?
The battle between
the record companies and Pirate Bay
has now entered a new stage.
It was at five o'clock this morning,
the police led by prosecutor Pontén
stormed the underground bunker
where Pirate Bay had its servers.
Mr Sundin, what do you think
about the Pirate Bay raid?
It's welcome but a little late.
It's nice that the Swedish Government
has realized they're not freedom fighters,
but ordinary criminals.
So now, I hope they get the
punishment they deserve.
We continue with more headlines.
Hurricane Katrina has brought,
Louisiana to a complete standstill,
Katrina rolled from the gulf
of Mexico and hit Louisiana at
5am local time. It moves
about about 105 miles per hour,
Pirate Bay had everything in one place.
- A lawsuit against Pirate Bay
- Daniel
The record companies pushed for this.
Yeah, and?
People like Sundin won't stop
and now we have to negotiate with them.
Yeah, we'll have to talk to them.
No! They're the bad guys here,
not Pirate Bay.
We've all used that website
since we were kids.
We know the people who created them,
we respect them.
Yes.
The people who create the technology that
you need, care about things like this.
They care about who's gonna control it.
I chose to come to Spotify
because I thought it was going to be free.
Andreas, Spotify is a business.
A business?
I don't want to be part of a business that
compromises with record companies.
If we make a deal with them, we do it
on our terms, not theirs. Or not at all.
I think it was right at this moment,
when I confronted Daniel, that the whole
dynamic at Spotify started to change.
What did I tell you?
A company needs one leader.
It's alright,
Andreas just needs to let it out.
Hey, I met a friend from Gothenburg,
who said he worked with a completely
insane coder, like you and Andreas.
Who?
Ludvig Strigeus.
Maybe we can work on that.
Or even working on this peer-search
might be something, an option that we
Hey, Ludvig.
- Hi.
- Hey.
I heard about what
you're up to, sounds pretty cool.
Okay guys,
please welcome Ludvig to the team.
He's just agreed to join Spotify
as a consultant.
And we are very grateful
and happy about that!
- Great!
- Welcome!
This is interesting.
Can we talk for a second?
Ludvig Strigeus?
Without saying anything,
not asking, consulting?
If anything, you should be thanking me.
No one knows
peer-to-peer better than Ludvig.
Okay. Fine, but, uh
Is this because I expressed my opinion?
No, Andreas. We just bought uTorrent from
Ludvig. We'll be able to use his code.
Listen, he's still part of your team.
You're the CTO.
Why didn't you ask me?
The best idea wins, your policy, right?
He'll run the front end, you the back end.
Andreas. How long are you going
to be like this?
Go to sleep.
I just need to think about some things.
Hi Erh
- Gunnar has an idea.
- Yeah?
What if this speed problem we've
been having can't be solved with P2P?
Well, it's possible with a server,
but Daniel said we have to use P2P.
We'll use P2P. That's what works best and
that's fine, that's the way it should be.
But let's say this, um
Fredrik likes Otis Redding.
The system can figure out that he likes
Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett, too.
The system prepares and uploads them, then
buffers ahead for when it's time to play.
So it's done before
it even did the search.
But ten percent of the time
he'll deceive us and decide he doesn't
want to listen to Detroit Soul anymore.
He wants to listen to something else,
he wants to listen to Vivaldi or Megadeth.
It takes too long. That's
A peer-to-peer system can't do it.
Right but that's when boom!
We switch from a peer-to-peer system
to a server.
Just for that search.
Just for that search.
Like a body switching systems to keep
blood pressure steady. Nice one, Gunnar!
Yeah
So we've built a hybrid system.
Okay
Essentially, it's still peer-to-peer.
It's convenient and easy to scale up.
Ten percent of the time, only when needed,
we have the option to switch to a server,
load the first few seconds from there and
switch back to P2P when it catches up.
Even unexpected searches respond
and the system will keep improving.
It's fantastic.
This is the most sophisticated
music player ever built.
It's smart, it's smooth, it's fast.
Wow!
Nah, it's too slow. On random
searches, there is a slight delay.
Now we're at 250 milliseconds.
The human ear perceives anything under 200
milliseconds as instantaneous.
- That's 0.05 seconds
- And that's not good enough.
So this is because of the TCP/IP.
I don't know if you know how it works,
but basically it's internet architecture.
We have to wait for the ACK
from the client,
otherwise we get packet loss.
That's a hard red light.
And it's your job to find a way around it.
But that's how
the whole fucking internet works!
You're asking for
something that's impossible!
If we design a car,
we can make the engine bigger
we can make the wheels spin faster,
but we can't build a new road,
just because you don't
understand the technology!
Here's the thing Andreas,
I gave you this opportunity.
And I backed you up to.
So either you build the player that I want
or you can go.
You doing okay?
Daniel is the boss, Andreas.
Everyone knows that.
The boss
Andreas
I know.
When I was a kid
I was always the nerd.
And I tried, I
In school, I was too
much and I was too little,
and I had to learn to accept that people
like me, we don't have friends.
But I just you know, fantasized that
I would I would find my gang.
That I'd find
my avengers.
People who were on
the same wavelength as me.
Yeah. Maybe I'm just too
Can I have that.
Okay.
We know that when our server
starts sending data to the client,
it's kind of like when a car pulls up
to an intersection and gets a red light.
But what do you do
when you see the light about to turn red?
You accelerate.
The idea is to slow down, but
everyone speeds up, that's what you do.
- But we can't really
- Yes, we can.
We clone the TCP/IP,
then we do our own implementation
of both flow and congestion control.
A big fucking congestion window
and no slow start at all.
That's right.
Our only problem is that the timeout
is too strict for our purpose.
It prevents us from sending data faster
than the network can actually handle.
Yeah sure, we'd get some packet
loss, but nobody needs to know about that.
Yeah, okay. But what does
that mean in plain language?
Alright, here's the deal. The
internet is basically built to be perfect.
No data should be lost.
And for the vast majority of purposes,
that's absolutely fine.
After all, the defense industry built it.
They have to stop at the red light.
Because if they accidentally crash,
all the data is lost.
But fuck that. Fuck the Pentagon.
We're Spotify, if we crash a little bit,
it doesn't matter.
The tiny part of the song that gets lost,
no one will notice it even existed.
It is simply not audible.
We will build the first protocol
that breaks the rules.
The world's first system
to be imperfect on purpose.
When we see the red light,
we won't slow down.
We will accelerate.
Even if we lose a minuscule part of the
song, who cares?
Let's do it!
This is a brand new protocol.
Gunnar and Fredrik applied
for a patent this morning.
Whatever happens from here, we've created
a nice little piece of computer history.
A unique network
protocol that's never been seen before.
The best-designed, most user-friendly,
the most complete
music player that ever existed.
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
It's goddamn perfect!
Yes!
Try and try ♪
- Nice work.
- You'll succeed at last ♪
Persecution you must fear
Win or lose you got to ♪
- Get your share ♪
- Shit, you guys should be proud! Wow.
We got it!
You can get it though
Hard it may seem now ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want
But you must try ♪
Try and try, try and try ♪
Thanks. Does Lisa still work here?
Yeah, but she's taken a few weeks off.
I'm not sure when she'll be back.
Okay, thanks.
- Have you heard Ama's fancy new title?
- No.
Vice President of Engineering at Spotify.
Daniel is reorganizing.
Fredrik has got a new one too,
Product Development Director.
Congratulations.
Daniel?
- Do you have a second?
- Yeah, what's up?
Reorganizing?
Yeah. It's needed after two years.
So you are giving everyone titles?
I mean like
Head of Engineering and Vice President?
I mean, isn't that what
we weren't supposed to do?
This way, everything
will be more efficient.
I want everyone to work directly under me,
the whole coding team. It's better.
Under you. This is about you again?
It's the fact that I have to sell the
company and I need to have some control.
I know what we need
and I need people to get that.
Well, I think you've gotten so
caught up being the boss, you somehow
forgot what Spotify is,
and what it could be.
- I don't know what that means.
- I was your first employee for a reason.
Andreas, maybe life
isn't about employment.
Maybe it's about a special project
that you get to do,
and when it's done, then
It's all there is.
- Martin!
- Hi!
Sophia Who is that?
Petra Hansson, she's a lawyer.
But we already have a lawyer.
Yeah, but Petra is going to be handling
the deals with the record companies.
Daniel.
We have this new functionality
that I think you'll want to see.
On the left,
the artist page as it was,
and on the right, as it is now.
Our beta testers have given us user data
that allows us to customize
the whole experience for them.
- This is fucking good!
- Yes, this is unbelievable.
It finally gives us a real edge
over the record companies.
- I'm not giving this to them.
- No.
- Why not? These offer the prospects for
- We'd be playing into their hands.
The whole point of Spotify was
to share power more equally in the market.
We can't go and give the
record companies even more power.
Please, Daniel, come on, they own
the music you're collecting data from.
Yeah
OK, here's the deal. We'll have to pay
those record companies a one-off fee.
So we need to discuss whether
we can keep Spotify free or not.
What? You're not
suggesting a paywall are you?
We're discussing whether we can keep
any part of Spotify free at all, yes.
The music is already free,
it's already up on Pirate Bay, so
Okay, Andreas, can we talk
No, wait a minute.
When we started this,
we agreed it had to be free.
The younger generation
expects it to be free.
Okay, you've started this
as a teenage dream, I get it.
You want to do it your way, the easy way.
But it's not a sustainable business model.
That's why we're fumbling
around trying to find one now.
We started this with an idea, a principle.
I don't know if you understand that.
- Good luck getting the bank to understand.
- The bank? The bank?
Why do you let the bank run your life?
Who cares what they think?
Okay, listen to me.
Either you accept that you have
to make major concessions and
fast or we're done working together.
Okay. Then I guess we're done.
- Thank you for your time.
- Petra, what are you doing?
It's been great,
but I can't work like this.
Petra!
Good.
Daniel, we have the technology now.
We've built something beautiful
that everyone would want to use.
We're almost out of money.
- We'll go bankrupt.
- No, not bankrupt.
It's gonna be a bit tough, but if we
launch now, even without rights,
we'll crush all the other
streaming services within weeks.
While the record companies
are suing our asses off.
They need us. We will be too big to fail.
I want Petra to come back.
What?
I want Petra to come back.
You know, it's still Spotify.
It's still our thing Andreas.
Really? Daniel only gave up 20%
of the company.
- Are you coming?
- No.
Three bottles of champagne.
- Are you okay?
- Yeah.
Tech is changing.
But people will always be people.
They need a leader, a star
that shines brighter than everyone else.
But this is the opposite
of what we said we would do.
This is reality, Andreas.
And if you'll just stop fighting it,
you'll find yourself rich as hell.
Show some leadership, come on.
That's the thing, we have a responsibility
It was you, me and Daniel in the office.
I own more of Spotify
than anyone else after you two.
No, you don't.
We needed Ludvig, so we gave him 5%.
Code.
It can be beautiful.
When I learned to program,
I saw that it was
pure. No ambiguities.
Spotify was the purest,
most beautiful thing I ever created.
Yet all the layers of code,
all the algorithms,
turned out to be more and more inadequate,
and more illogical than I could bear.
There were bugs that left me stuck
in perpetual segmentation errors.
I was in the wrong place in the memory.
It was time to do a hard reset
of the whole system
and realize that everyone is disposable.
This is the final call
to flight SA7062 to Singapore.
That's not what really happened.
Subtitle translation by: Adefoluke Adebayo
Code. It can be beautiful.
When I learned to program,
I saw that it was pure.
No ambiguities.
Nothing to interpret, nothing to convey.
It just is.
And for me, it's part of my DNA.
The world we live in is incomplete.
Fragile and blurry.
In the binary world,
there are only ones and zeros.
That's perfection.
All you need to get started is an idea.
And then slowly, one command at a time,
you create something new.
Something pure and true that,
didn't exist before.
Something that never lies or
pretends to be something it isn't.
A universe out of nothing.
You take the ugly chaotic world we live in
and you make it perfect.
Andreas?
You were going to show us
the latest updates.
Anyone could have answered
their questions. In their sleep.
No one is interested in my ideas.
We are interested in your ideas.
But we're also interested
in making a profit.
Yeah, I know. Check this out.
What is this?
I've started constructing
a more immersive open-world experience.
This can give our users something
to aspire to, to dream about, to create
Well, our users are
12 and 13 year old girls. Get it?
All they have to do is play with dolls
and buy our fucking add-ons.
Fame, fashion and friends, Andreas.
Don't forget that.
Oh, sorry This is Daniel.
Daniel's going to be a consultant here.
Daniel gets business. Listen to him, okay?
Hmm?
I like what you said, it was nice.
Yeah, but who cares?
- He just wants to sell add-ons.
- Can I see?
I just thought a tech start-up
would be different.
That they would be interested
in some new ideas. Take some risks.
This is awesome. How did you get the dolls
to react so quickly?
I've built a new layer,
so now there's a feedback loop
to anticipate what users want
before they want it.
Okay.
Yeah well, don't worry.
The boss hates it, so I'll just delete it.
Why? It's brilliant. If Mattias doesn't
appreciate it, that's his problem.
- Except that he's the boss.
- So? Then why are you still here?
If you want to be creative, quit this damn
job, do your own thing. Be your own boss.
People like me just don't run businesses.
We consult, advise, maybe are CTOs.
Says who? I just did it.
Started a tech company with only coders,
sold it for ten million.
Just think about it.
This is nice.
What are you reading?
The Gutenberg Galaxy.
Marshall McLuhan. What's it about?
It's about
how technology made it possible
for knowledge to spread in new ways.
You know before, there was no point in
learning to read as there were no books.
That's true.
But then a whole new wave
of information came along and so
Well, everyone can have access to it
if they wanted to.
So access made people consume more?
Exactly.
People like Mattias will never get it.
They just think they get it,
but we've grown up with technology.
It's been a part of us since we
were kids, before we could even speak.
We can't let them decide
what we should do with it.
Check this out.
This is a streaming system for free music.
This is exactly what you're talking about.
A way to listen
to every song released,
so that everyone in the world
can have access to all music.
Nice. But you know
there's already Pirate Bay?
Sure, but give me a step by step guide
on how to download a song from Pirate Bay.
Oh, it's easy.
You just go to the website
search for the torrent you want,
download it, open it in a client
There's different files, right? So first,
you have to go through them one by one,
see which one you want
Yes. True. So then you sort out what
you don't want, it downloads
Yeah, if it downloads and isn't a virus.
Then you have to decide which
folder it goes into, what to name it,
how to list the songs
so they play in the right order,
according to an artist or an album
and all of these you have to store
on your own hard drive.
This is what I'm talking about.
All this enthusiasm,
everything Pirate Bay built,
we're going to take to a whole new level.
The world needs
freedom from record companies.
and something way better than Pirate Bay.
At first, it was just an idea
It's a beautiful thought, but won't work.
Investors will force you to compromise
until it's no longer beautiful
Good thing I'm the investor then.
I'll put everything I earn into this.
Every day Every day
that we stand up to them,
the authorities begin to understand
that we are unstoppable.
Yes!
You know what we're doing here?
We're writing history.
- This is yours?
- Uhn uhn.
Welcome to Spotify headquarters!
This is where we'll build
the world's most beautiful music site.
- And you want me?
- I want you to help me.
I need you to help me build the kind of
company that can create brilliance.
Okay.
Oh, that's Martin. Martin!
Don't worry, he He looks like
one of them, but he's one of us.
Andreas, nice to meet you!
My name is Martin Lorentzon.
Andreas.
I know your boss.
He says you're incredibly good,
but annoying as hell.
We need annoying as hell.
I want people who think in new ways,
who understand that the whole new era
requires whole new approaches.
Welcome aboard.
Welcome aboard?
You are our first employee, CTO.
You'll own more of the company
than anyone except me and Martin.
So how should we design it?
What do you need?
Okay. The coders will sit in the middle.
Everything flows from here,
all the ideas, all the creativity.
We're going to need more ethernet cables,
and ceiling electrical outlets.
And everyone on the team will be equal.
No hierarchy, no cliques and no titles.
If two people think differently, then it
shouldn't matter who has the highest rank.
Best idea wins, no matter what.
So who's going to be on the team?
You have to let me handpick them.
We can't use regular coders.
To make the best site in the world,
we need the elite.
People who would have
never joined a regular start-up.
We need Gunnar Kreitz.
I met him at college, computer science.
He's the best programmer in the world.
And Fredrik Niemelä, a prodigy.
The only one with a team
that could challenge Gunnar's.
Jon Åslund,
Mattias Arrelid, Andreas Mattsson.
We need a great designer, too
Rasmus Andersson would be perfect.
We can create the
world's best coding team.
Like the seven samurai, but coders.
That looks nice!
Oh God, you look so handsome.
Brilliant! Okay, shall we?
There it is! The money shot! The best.
Spotify is about one thing.
Access.
Access gives freedom.
Access makes users
independent from the music industry
And speed. If there's one thing users hate
about Pandora or Last FM, it's buffering.
You don't use Google
because it's the best,
it's because it's the fastest.
If Spotify is
gonna succeed, speed is key.
Don't forget that!
- Okay, access and speed.
- Mhm. Let's do this!
Yes!
When you start programming,
you'll merely notice there's no shortcuts.
You have to dare to get your hands dirty.
A little code under your fingernails.
A computer is like a child
who doesn't know anything yet.
I have to teach them,
and that means everything.
If my instructions are illogical,
incomplete or inadequate,
you will get a bug.
And the bug
may cause the program to crash, severely.
- Come on!
- No
- Oh! Come, yes.
- No
You want to, come on!
Yes, hi.
Would you mind if introduced you
to my good friend Andreas.
He's the quiet type, but his
eyes can speak a thousand words.
Okay. So, what are
his eyes saying right now?
Here's my card, order whatever you want.
Hi
He is Um
Yeah
So
So?
Have you looked
at any congestion control algorithms?
- No.
- No.
And that has to be the worst
pick-up line in entire world.
Eh What
What are you interested in? Beer?
Medical science. I'm a student.
I only work here on the weekends.
Okay. Yeah, right, cell biology.
Uhm mh.
- Okay.
- What can I get you?
What do you think?
Give me something you like.
Okay.
So tell me about cell biology.
The cell is the most remarkable
of all organisms in biology.
Yeah?
It recreates itself, regulates itself.
It's like a little factory that produces
whatever is needed to keep running,
and it renews parts that need to be
replaced, but it kind of services itself.
And if needed, the production
can be changed in an instant.
All the recipes needed to produce
what the factory creates
are sort of encoded in the cell's genome.
And the cool thing about it all is that,
Well, it doesn't need any
blueprints, anything like that.
It just regulates itself and it
takes command of itself.
It's fascinating really, how it all
just continues to work all on its own
That was beautiful.
Thanks.
So
What would you say if
I asked you out sometime?
Khovd? Where the hell is that?
No clue, but we have
to go there To Mongolia.
Okay.
The globe decides. That's the rule, okay?
So, tell me. What were you tech nerds
celebrating at the bar tonight?
A new streaming service.
Is there any action in that?
Actually, there is. I mean,
the record companies and the pirates
They all try to stop us.
Uhm mh.
So Spotify will create
a world without intermediaries.
Where music can flow freely,
like water or electricity.
Where people can upload,
listen to whatever they want.
Uhm mh.
Create, share, whatever they want.
It won't cost a thing.
That was beautiful.
It's done.
Test it.
Now, try something else.
Yeah
Unbelievable!
With help from the whole team,
we've made a smoother, faster system.
It's actually a lot faster now and we've
reduced the delay. So now the searches
It's still too slow.
This is basically a masterpiece.
Why should I care about that?
500 milliseconds is too slow.
Why would I bother clicking on a song
if I have to wait 500 milliseconds for it?
- How long is acceptable?
- Zero!
Zero? That's impossible
and Daniel knew it.
The delay between
when you click on a link on the internet
and when content is sent from a server,
is affected by several factors.
Suddenly, it depends on the
amount of content but also on the
type of internet connection, the workload
on the network not to mention distribution
which is the distance
a cable has to carry data,
I could streamline by adapting the
the structure and finding some shortcuts
but really it's just the amount of content
that you have control over.
Daniel! Look at this, only 12 month's
warranty and it's at 75,000.
That's a colossal amount.
- Andreas!
- Yes?
Okay, here's the deal.
We can't afford to do this on servers.
I built the entire system on servers.
Okay, but we can't afford the amount of
servers we would need to scale up.
You're going to have to
build this as a P2P network.
So Why am I totally speechless right now?
Okay, to explain that, I need to get
a bit technical. Try to keep up now.
If you wanted to build a
streaming service like Spotify in
2006, you really only had two options.
Number one, to use servers.
Okay, I'm server. This is me,
here. I have access to a database.
You can think of it as a big pile of CDs.
My only job is basically to serve you the
songs from these CDs. This is you.
When you ask me to,
I'll go and pick a CD out of the pile,
I'll read the song you want from here,
send it to you, from beginning to the end,
a little at a time
just like how you usually listen
to music, it's lightening fast.
The problem is that it's expensive.
Servers are expensive to buy,
but they're mainly expensive to run.
They use a lot of electricity,
and when they use it, they get
hot, so you need more electricity to run
the fans that cool the servers. Okay.
That's why Daniel asked me a moment ago
to use option number two,
building a peer-to-peer network.
I'll explain that, too.
Okay, so peer-to-peer was the invention
that laid the foundation
for all the services
like Kazaa, Napster, Limewire
and of course Pirate Bay.
Now we don't have a server anymore,
just a bunch of confused users out there
who are somehow connected
to each other via the internet.
All the internet-connected computers
on this network
are each other's equals. They are peers.
Okay. The problem is
that when we lost the server,
we lost contact with the database.
So the whole world's music
is no longer available.
But the users have
a few different records each,
and as long as they're willing
to share with each other,
we have a nice little communist society
on the internet,
but unlike communism,
this idea really works.
Now, when you want to listen a specific
song, you first ask your neighbors,
"Please, do any of you have the song?"
Since there are billions of songs and only
a few neighbors, they'll probably say no.
But they can ask their neighbors,
who ask their neighbors,
until you finally find someone who has
the song and starts sending it to you.
This way, Spotify doesn't have to buy
lots of expensive servers,
but, there is a big disadvantage. See, it
takes an agonizingly long time.
It's a cheap solution,
and definitely a bad one.
Had Daniel been a real coder,
he'd have known that,
and he'd have know that
he was asking me to do the impossible.
He has a tendency to do that.
I'll give it a try.
- Hi!
- Hello
- Hungry?
- Yeah.
Good!
Sorry.
Hello?
You need to get
down here, bring your computer.
What? Why?
Because Per Sundin is here.
It's a chance to pitch to him.
Okay. I have to go.
What? Now?
Yes. Sorry.
Complicate, then they overcompensate ♪
She running back ♪
She got her own ♪
Daniel, I've tried to make it faster, but
I'm working against the very essence of
Yeah, but you can do it. It's all good.
We should let one of the datalogists
check if it's even possible
Andreas, of course it's possible.
If anyone can do it, it's you. Okay?
You're my kind of woman ♪
I should be able
to optimize the search itself.
Great!
But even so, there are ten more layers
that are too slow.
That's him!
Give me your laptop.
Running it, running it, running it
You are ♪
You are, you are ♪
Running it, running it, running it
You are ♪
Free? What the hell makes you
think I'd be interested in free music?
What the hell is wrong
with your generation? Huh?
Music can never be free.
If I get another one
of these fucking pitches,
I'm gonna make it my personal mission
to crush your little shitty company.
You got that?
I hope I've been
very, very, very clear with you.
Just make it fast, Andreas.
I want him to come crawling back.
Did he really throw it on
the ground?
Yeah.
Why?
He is a little unstable right now.
He wants it to be faster.
I don't even know
if it's theoretically possible.
So
Sometimes when the heart
can't pump blood fast enough,
the body finds ways to compensate.
The arteries sort of reshape themselves
to create the pressure
that the circulatory system needs.
So I don't know, but maybe you can
come up with something new?
The battle between
the record companies and Pirate Bay
has now entered a new stage.
It was at five o'clock this morning,
the police led by prosecutor Pontén
stormed the underground bunker
where Pirate Bay had its servers.
Mr Sundin, what do you think
about the Pirate Bay raid?
It's welcome but a little late.
It's nice that the Swedish Government
has realized they're not freedom fighters,
but ordinary criminals.
So now, I hope they get the
punishment they deserve.
We continue with more headlines.
Hurricane Katrina has brought,
Louisiana to a complete standstill,
Katrina rolled from the gulf
of Mexico and hit Louisiana at
5am local time. It moves
about about 105 miles per hour,
Pirate Bay had everything in one place.
- A lawsuit against Pirate Bay
- Daniel
The record companies pushed for this.
Yeah, and?
People like Sundin won't stop
and now we have to negotiate with them.
Yeah, we'll have to talk to them.
No! They're the bad guys here,
not Pirate Bay.
We've all used that website
since we were kids.
We know the people who created them,
we respect them.
Yes.
The people who create the technology that
you need, care about things like this.
They care about who's gonna control it.
I chose to come to Spotify
because I thought it was going to be free.
Andreas, Spotify is a business.
A business?
I don't want to be part of a business that
compromises with record companies.
If we make a deal with them, we do it
on our terms, not theirs. Or not at all.
I think it was right at this moment,
when I confronted Daniel, that the whole
dynamic at Spotify started to change.
What did I tell you?
A company needs one leader.
It's alright,
Andreas just needs to let it out.
Hey, I met a friend from Gothenburg,
who said he worked with a completely
insane coder, like you and Andreas.
Who?
Ludvig Strigeus.
Maybe we can work on that.
Or even working on this peer-search
might be something, an option that we
Hey, Ludvig.
- Hi.
- Hey.
I heard about what
you're up to, sounds pretty cool.
Okay guys,
please welcome Ludvig to the team.
He's just agreed to join Spotify
as a consultant.
And we are very grateful
and happy about that!
- Great!
- Welcome!
This is interesting.
Can we talk for a second?
Ludvig Strigeus?
Without saying anything,
not asking, consulting?
If anything, you should be thanking me.
No one knows
peer-to-peer better than Ludvig.
Okay. Fine, but, uh
Is this because I expressed my opinion?
No, Andreas. We just bought uTorrent from
Ludvig. We'll be able to use his code.
Listen, he's still part of your team.
You're the CTO.
Why didn't you ask me?
The best idea wins, your policy, right?
He'll run the front end, you the back end.
Andreas. How long are you going
to be like this?
Go to sleep.
I just need to think about some things.
Hi Erh
- Gunnar has an idea.
- Yeah?
What if this speed problem we've
been having can't be solved with P2P?
Well, it's possible with a server,
but Daniel said we have to use P2P.
We'll use P2P. That's what works best and
that's fine, that's the way it should be.
But let's say this, um
Fredrik likes Otis Redding.
The system can figure out that he likes
Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett, too.
The system prepares and uploads them, then
buffers ahead for when it's time to play.
So it's done before
it even did the search.
But ten percent of the time
he'll deceive us and decide he doesn't
want to listen to Detroit Soul anymore.
He wants to listen to something else,
he wants to listen to Vivaldi or Megadeth.
It takes too long. That's
A peer-to-peer system can't do it.
Right but that's when boom!
We switch from a peer-to-peer system
to a server.
Just for that search.
Just for that search.
Like a body switching systems to keep
blood pressure steady. Nice one, Gunnar!
Yeah
So we've built a hybrid system.
Okay
Essentially, it's still peer-to-peer.
It's convenient and easy to scale up.
Ten percent of the time, only when needed,
we have the option to switch to a server,
load the first few seconds from there and
switch back to P2P when it catches up.
Even unexpected searches respond
and the system will keep improving.
It's fantastic.
This is the most sophisticated
music player ever built.
It's smart, it's smooth, it's fast.
Wow!
Nah, it's too slow. On random
searches, there is a slight delay.
Now we're at 250 milliseconds.
The human ear perceives anything under 200
milliseconds as instantaneous.
- That's 0.05 seconds
- And that's not good enough.
So this is because of the TCP/IP.
I don't know if you know how it works,
but basically it's internet architecture.
We have to wait for the ACK
from the client,
otherwise we get packet loss.
That's a hard red light.
And it's your job to find a way around it.
But that's how
the whole fucking internet works!
You're asking for
something that's impossible!
If we design a car,
we can make the engine bigger
we can make the wheels spin faster,
but we can't build a new road,
just because you don't
understand the technology!
Here's the thing Andreas,
I gave you this opportunity.
And I backed you up to.
So either you build the player that I want
or you can go.
You doing okay?
Daniel is the boss, Andreas.
Everyone knows that.
The boss
Andreas
I know.
When I was a kid
I was always the nerd.
And I tried, I
In school, I was too
much and I was too little,
and I had to learn to accept that people
like me, we don't have friends.
But I just you know, fantasized that
I would I would find my gang.
That I'd find
my avengers.
People who were on
the same wavelength as me.
Yeah. Maybe I'm just too
Can I have that.
Okay.
We know that when our server
starts sending data to the client,
it's kind of like when a car pulls up
to an intersection and gets a red light.
But what do you do
when you see the light about to turn red?
You accelerate.
The idea is to slow down, but
everyone speeds up, that's what you do.
- But we can't really
- Yes, we can.
We clone the TCP/IP,
then we do our own implementation
of both flow and congestion control.
A big fucking congestion window
and no slow start at all.
That's right.
Our only problem is that the timeout
is too strict for our purpose.
It prevents us from sending data faster
than the network can actually handle.
Yeah sure, we'd get some packet
loss, but nobody needs to know about that.
Yeah, okay. But what does
that mean in plain language?
Alright, here's the deal. The
internet is basically built to be perfect.
No data should be lost.
And for the vast majority of purposes,
that's absolutely fine.
After all, the defense industry built it.
They have to stop at the red light.
Because if they accidentally crash,
all the data is lost.
But fuck that. Fuck the Pentagon.
We're Spotify, if we crash a little bit,
it doesn't matter.
The tiny part of the song that gets lost,
no one will notice it even existed.
It is simply not audible.
We will build the first protocol
that breaks the rules.
The world's first system
to be imperfect on purpose.
When we see the red light,
we won't slow down.
We will accelerate.
Even if we lose a minuscule part of the
song, who cares?
Let's do it!
This is a brand new protocol.
Gunnar and Fredrik applied
for a patent this morning.
Whatever happens from here, we've created
a nice little piece of computer history.
A unique network
protocol that's never been seen before.
The best-designed, most user-friendly,
the most complete
music player that ever existed.
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
It's goddamn perfect!
Yes!
Try and try ♪
- Nice work.
- You'll succeed at last ♪
Persecution you must fear
Win or lose you got to ♪
- Get your share ♪
- Shit, you guys should be proud! Wow.
We got it!
You can get it though
Hard it may seem now ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want ♪
You can get it if you really want
But you must try ♪
Try and try, try and try ♪
Thanks. Does Lisa still work here?
Yeah, but she's taken a few weeks off.
I'm not sure when she'll be back.
Okay, thanks.
- Have you heard Ama's fancy new title?
- No.
Vice President of Engineering at Spotify.
Daniel is reorganizing.
Fredrik has got a new one too,
Product Development Director.
Congratulations.
Daniel?
- Do you have a second?
- Yeah, what's up?
Reorganizing?
Yeah. It's needed after two years.
So you are giving everyone titles?
I mean like
Head of Engineering and Vice President?
I mean, isn't that what
we weren't supposed to do?
This way, everything
will be more efficient.
I want everyone to work directly under me,
the whole coding team. It's better.
Under you. This is about you again?
It's the fact that I have to sell the
company and I need to have some control.
I know what we need
and I need people to get that.
Well, I think you've gotten so
caught up being the boss, you somehow
forgot what Spotify is,
and what it could be.
- I don't know what that means.
- I was your first employee for a reason.
Andreas, maybe life
isn't about employment.
Maybe it's about a special project
that you get to do,
and when it's done, then
It's all there is.
- Martin!
- Hi!
Sophia Who is that?
Petra Hansson, she's a lawyer.
But we already have a lawyer.
Yeah, but Petra is going to be handling
the deals with the record companies.
Daniel.
We have this new functionality
that I think you'll want to see.
On the left,
the artist page as it was,
and on the right, as it is now.
Our beta testers have given us user data
that allows us to customize
the whole experience for them.
- This is fucking good!
- Yes, this is unbelievable.
It finally gives us a real edge
over the record companies.
- I'm not giving this to them.
- No.
- Why not? These offer the prospects for
- We'd be playing into their hands.
The whole point of Spotify was
to share power more equally in the market.
We can't go and give the
record companies even more power.
Please, Daniel, come on, they own
the music you're collecting data from.
Yeah
OK, here's the deal. We'll have to pay
those record companies a one-off fee.
So we need to discuss whether
we can keep Spotify free or not.
What? You're not
suggesting a paywall are you?
We're discussing whether we can keep
any part of Spotify free at all, yes.
The music is already free,
it's already up on Pirate Bay, so
Okay, Andreas, can we talk
No, wait a minute.
When we started this,
we agreed it had to be free.
The younger generation
expects it to be free.
Okay, you've started this
as a teenage dream, I get it.
You want to do it your way, the easy way.
But it's not a sustainable business model.
That's why we're fumbling
around trying to find one now.
We started this with an idea, a principle.
I don't know if you understand that.
- Good luck getting the bank to understand.
- The bank? The bank?
Why do you let the bank run your life?
Who cares what they think?
Okay, listen to me.
Either you accept that you have
to make major concessions and
fast or we're done working together.
Okay. Then I guess we're done.
- Thank you for your time.
- Petra, what are you doing?
It's been great,
but I can't work like this.
Petra!
Good.
Daniel, we have the technology now.
We've built something beautiful
that everyone would want to use.
We're almost out of money.
- We'll go bankrupt.
- No, not bankrupt.
It's gonna be a bit tough, but if we
launch now, even without rights,
we'll crush all the other
streaming services within weeks.
While the record companies
are suing our asses off.
They need us. We will be too big to fail.
I want Petra to come back.
What?
I want Petra to come back.
You know, it's still Spotify.
It's still our thing Andreas.
Really? Daniel only gave up 20%
of the company.
- Are you coming?
- No.
Three bottles of champagne.
- Are you okay?
- Yeah.
Tech is changing.
But people will always be people.
They need a leader, a star
that shines brighter than everyone else.
But this is the opposite
of what we said we would do.
This is reality, Andreas.
And if you'll just stop fighting it,
you'll find yourself rich as hell.
Show some leadership, come on.
That's the thing, we have a responsibility
It was you, me and Daniel in the office.
I own more of Spotify
than anyone else after you two.
No, you don't.
We needed Ludvig, so we gave him 5%.
Code.
It can be beautiful.
When I learned to program,
I saw that it was
pure. No ambiguities.
Spotify was the purest,
most beautiful thing I ever created.
Yet all the layers of code,
all the algorithms,
turned out to be more and more inadequate,
and more illogical than I could bear.
There were bugs that left me stuck
in perpetual segmentation errors.
I was in the wrong place in the memory.
It was time to do a hard reset
of the whole system
and realize that everyone is disposable.
This is the final call
to flight SA7062 to Singapore.
That's not what really happened.
Subtitle translation by: Adefoluke Adebayo