Spotify once had top-secret plans to become the king of video streaming

A new book has revealed that Spotify had top-secret plans to dominate the movie/television streaming world.

Spotify Untold, a new book penned by Swedish journalists Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, uncovers the hidden world of Spotify TV, an under wraps service which CEO Daniel Ek developed from 2011 to 2015 in the attempt to take on Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV.

The book mainly focuses on how Spotify once sought out to build a digital on-demand alternative to cable and satellite, seeking to offer viewers live sports and news, current seasons of TV, and movies. Video content was to be highly personalized using Spotify’s personalization algorithms. The Swedish streaming giant even had plans to manufacture a hardware box for Spotify TV.

Spotify Untold also documents how the company came close to acquiring it’s rival music streaming platforms, TIDAL and SoundCloud. The authors spoke with more than 70 informants to compose the book, including former top Spotify executives and record company heads.

Now that video streaming is no longer apart of the picture, Spotify has shifted its focus to podcasts. CEO Ek is attempting to expand beyond music content with the goal of making Spotify the “Netflix for audio.” Ek even forecasts that 20% of Spotify consumption will be non-music related in the coming years, which explains why the Swedish streaming platform has invested over $300 million in exclusive podcast content this year alone.

H/T: The Trichordist