After almost two decades of decline, music industry revenues are finally starting to recover again and a lot of the credit goes to one guy: Daniel Ek, Founder of Spotify. Ironically, Spotify was backed by the guy who helped enable all that piracy to begin with: Napster’s Sean Parker.

It was no small thing for the Recording Industry to learn to love Spotify… or any Internet music company for that matter. It was also no small thing for Ek to start Spotify with the stance of not wanting to “Disrupt” music labels—he wanted to help them.

It took Founder Daniel Ek two years to get his first deals in Sweden, and another two years to launch in the US. He and his partner invested largely their own money until they showed traction, and likely would h...