Daniel Ek founded Spotify in 2008 to address the problem of how to get people to pay for music that was widely available for free online. Ek, a computer programmer who had become wealthy at a young age, developed Spotify as a streaming music service that allows users to listen to full songs without having to pay for each one individually, addressing a major challenge facing the music industry. Spotify launched first in other countries before expanding to the United States in 2009, and has since grown into one of the largest music streaming platforms worldwide.