A bit of news has come out of the Spotify camp this week.

Daniel Ek, the company’s CEO, has announced that he will step down from his role and assume the position of executive chairman.

This marks a transitional phase for the company as it looks to expand deeper into the creator space.

But if Spotify wants to become the platform for creators, it has a serious trust gap to close first.

Compared to YouTube, Spotify’s relationship with artists and creators is still on shaky ground, with low payouts, questionable transparency, and years of frustration have left scars.

If they want creators to buy into this next chapter, they’ll need more than new leadership. They’ll need a real change in how they value creative work.

Let’s get into it 👇

Can Spotify win over creators?

Daniel Ek stepping down as Spotify CEO might look like a leadership change, but it’s actually a signal of something much bigger.

Ek’s move from CEO to executive chairman (with two co-CEOs stepping in: Alex Norstrom and Gustav Söderström) marks a shift in how Spotify wants to position itself. Forget music streaming, Spotify wants to become The Platform for creators.

The company’s ambitions stretch far beyond playlists now. It’s betting on podcasts, audiobooks, video streaming, and even community features as the future of its ecosystem. In theory, it’s about empowering creators to monetise across multiple formats, but it’s messy.

Because Spotify’s relationship with creators has had a few trust issues.

Over the years, artists have criticised the company for low payouts, poor transparency, and what some call “AI slop”, the growing presence of machine-generated content that clogs discovery. Ek’s recent investment in a defence-tech company didn’t help either.

So while Ek’s title might have changed, not much else has. In fact, in his own words, the new co-CEOs will still report to him, and Spotify confirmed the shift “formalises how the company has operated since 2023.”

That’s the tension creators are watching closely. Spotify is trying to attract new types of creators, including video-first, cross-platform, audience-building types, while still struggling to satisfy the original ones: the musicians who made the platform what it is.

The challenges are clear:
🎧 Streaming adoption is low in Asia and Africa, and free users dominate.
🎧 AI competition threatens to flood the feed with low-quality content.
🎧 Monetising creators across multiple formats risks fragmenting the experience.
🎧 The battle with YouTube for creator loyalty and ad dollars.

Can a platform that’s had a checkered history of devaluing artists suddenly become the one creators trust?

Instagram

• is launching new 'Shareable Insights' for creators, which can be exported as a PDF. Invite-only for now!

• now shows when someone has reposted your reposted post

YouTube

• has given Advanced mode for analytics a new look and new features