He’s recently stepped down as CEO but apparently still remains heavily involved in the business.

Spotify’s stock price has taken a bit of a tumble since Ek’s announcement on September 30, dropping around 7.5% as of mid-day trading on the NYSE on October 9. That may be a reflection of the confidence that investors have in Ek as the driving force behind Spotify, and why Ek has gone to pains to stress that he is not leaving the company, and will continue to have an active hand in the business as a “European”-style Executive Chairman.

“Most investors may come at it from a US perspective, where [Chairman is] mostly a ceremonial role. In Europe, it isn’t. In fact, a Chairman is someone who’s quite active in the business, sometimes even represents the business externally to different stakeholders, like, for instance, governments or key partners,” Ek said on a recent investor call.

Ek walks away from the CEO role as one of the 10 richest people in Sweden, with Forbes estimating his fortune at $9.6 billion. Amid a massive run-up in Spotify’s stock over the past few years (at around $673 per share, it’s gone up about 8.5-fold since a bottom below $80 in late 2022), Ek has cashed in a significant amount of Spotify shares. By MBW’s estimates, he had sold nearly $808 million in Spotify stock as of this past May.

…

But some of Ek’s investments have proven controversial, most notably Prima Materia’s leading role in a €600 million ($700 million) Series D funding round into German defense firm Helsing. The company has sparked concerns over its joint project with Swedish aerospace company Saab to build an AI “combat agent” that can operate fighter jets.

That left a bitter taste in the mouths of many artists on Spotify, especially those who already considered the streaming service to be paying out what they see as low royalty rates on streams, cutting corners on mechanical royalties in the US, and (particularly irksome for some) paying Joe Rogan a huge sum for his podcast.

For some artists, it was the last straw. A number of them, including Sylvan Esso, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Deerhoof and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced they’re pulling their music from Spotify.

• https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/3-things-you-may-have-missed-about-daniel-eks-decision-to-step-back-as-spotify-ceo/

…Spotify’s Chief Executive Daniel Ek announced that he’d led a funding round of nearly $700 million (through his personal investment firm, Prima Materia) into the European defense firm Helsing. That company, which Ek now chairs, specializes in AI software integrated into fighter aircraft like its HX-2 AI Strike Drone. “Helsing is uniquely positioned with its AI leadership to deliver these critical capabilities in all-domain defence innovation,” Ek said in a statement about the funding round.

• https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leave

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)

Yeah, had a brain fart. I mean your second case. This seems trivial when typing short comments as you’ve done, but it’s incredible tedious when copying and pasting long lists and articles.

That’s an entirely different issue. I think what you’re talking about is just a shortcut for typing quickly. Even then a double space is replaced with a period and single space.

I’m talking about two paragraphs with two linefeeds in between will be displayed as a single paragraph unless there are two spaces before the linefeeds.

I kind of understand what you’re saying. But in an age of smartphones, I have to manually add double spaces at the end of every line for the end product to display as it appears when editing it. This probably seems trivial and stupid for folks on desktop, but even Discord has this figured out. Is this something that needs to be added at the app level?

If texture is your problem, try sun-dried tomatoes. Get good ones that aren’t dried into fruit leather and you can slice thinly and use as you would raw. Otherwise, they can reconstituted in warm water in a few minutes. Remember they’re dried and have very concentrated flavor so don’t use the same amount by volume as you would raw.

I imagine there would be several YouTube front ends for Linux, but I’m out of the loop as I’ve not had a Linux box in ages. On Android, I use NewPipe and others like Revanced (haven’t tried). You might also want to check out self-hosting comms. Those folks are very knowledgeable about going completely independent.

I think the developer is fairly active on the Lemmy.world instance if I remember correctly.

Spotify is killing the music business and the CEO invests in military tech to kill people. It’s evil. Don’t do it.

It’s a very personal shadow ban.

Journalists and activists can make good use of top security.