Netflix’s The Playlist wants to make Spotify feel like a thriller. It is a docu-drama about Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon building the streaming service that changed music forever, and it leans heavily on the idea that this was a fight against the old guard. The show premiered on 13 October 2022, with six episodes that trace the founding of the company through its early struggles. It is based on the book Spotify Untold, written by Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, and directed by Per-Olav Sørensen. The cast includes Edvin Endre as Ek, Christian Hillborg as Lorentzon, Gizem Erdogan as Petra Hansson, Ulf Stenberg as Per Sundin, and Severija Janušauskaitė as Maxine.
Trailer, via Netflix.
The Fiction Behind the Fact
The show calls itself a “fictionalized” story. That means it takes real events and shapes them into something closer to drama than documentary. The creators are working from a book, but the series adds tension, conflict and character detail that the record might not contain. This is a choice, not a confession, and the show plays it straight: this is how the story gets told.
The premise is simple. Ek sees a chance to fix the broken music industry by making legal streaming work. He builds a service with Lorentzon, and the two of them push against the major labels and pirates alike. The show wants you to believe that moment was a turning point, and it leans on that belief to drive its pacing.
Cast and Faces
The casting announcement came on 14 June 2021, and the two leads were named first. Edvin Endre plays Ek, and Christian Hillborg plays Lorentzon. Gizem Erdogan, Ulf Stenberg and Joel Lützow round out the main group. The rest of the cast fills out the world around them, with Hanna Ardéhn, Agnes Kittelsen, Ella Rappich, Jonatan Bökman, Lucas Serby and Janice all taking smaller parts.
Endre carries the weight of the show as Ek. His performance is steady, and he sells the ambition without ever tipping into vanity. Hillborg plays Lorentzon as the quieter half of the partnership, the one who handles the numbers while Ek handles the vision. Together, the two leads anchor a production that relies on their chemistry to hold the story together.
The Music Industry Fight
The show spends its first few episodes setting up the problem. The music industry is in crisis, and Ek sees a chance to solve it by making streaming work. The show dramatizes this as a war between the major labels and the pirates, with Ek positioned as a hero fighting both sides. That framing is the engine of the whole series, and it determines how every scene plays out.
The show is careful to present Ek as a man of vision, and it is careful to show the difficulty of building something new when everyone else wants to stop it. The pacing keeps the show moving quickly, and the tension is constant. It is a deliberate choice to make the founding of Spotify feel urgent, even though the outcome is already known.
Building the Service
The middle episodes of the show focus on the technical and business challenges of building a streaming service from nothing. Ek and Lorentzon face questions about licensing, revenue models and scaling that the show treats as dramatic obstacles. The show does not spend much time on the actual technology behind streaming, which would have made the story harder to follow. Instead, it stays focused on the human decisions that shaped the company’s path.
What remains is the shape of the struggle: Ek pushing forward, Lorentzon managing the money, and both of them facing resistance from people who had a stake in the old way of doing things. The show trusts the audience to understand that this is a story about change, not a biography.
Challenges Along the Way
The final stretch of the series deals with the early years of Spotify’s operation. The show shows Ek and Lorentzon facing unforeseen difficulties, and it suggests that the success of the service was far from guaranteed. The show ends with the company established but still facing tests, leaving the audience with the sense that the story is unfinished even though the show is complete.
The Show’s Strengths
The Playlist succeeds because it understands that the story of Spotify is fundamentally a story about disruption. Ek saw a problem that others could not solve, and he built a solution that changed the industry. The show captures that energy well, and it makes the early days of the company feel tense and alive.
The show’s weaknesses come from the same place. Because the story is fictionalized, it sometimes sacrifices realism for drama. Some scenes feel exaggerated, and some characters feel simplified, especially when the show focuses on the opposition to the service. The show is at its best when it sticks to the core relationship between Ek and Lorentzon, and at its weakest when it tries to recreate the wider world of the music industry.
The Final Word
The Playlist is a solid, well-made docu-drama that captures the spirit of innovation. It is not a perfect history, and it is not pretending to be one. What it offers instead is a compelling story about two men who saw the future and built it. The show knows what it is doing, and it executes its plan with skill.
The show is available now on Netflix, and it runs for six episodes. It is worth watching for anyone interested in the history of technology or the rise of streaming. It is a good show, and it earns its place on the streaming platform.
7 out of 10.
Release Schedule
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 14 June 2021 | Casting announcement |
| 13 October 2022 | Premiere on Netflix |
The show premiered on 13 October 2022, and it remains available on Netflix.
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