Original subtitles

WWW.MY-SUBS.CO

1 Code. It can be beautiful.

When I learned to program, I saw that it was... pure.

No ambiguities. Nothing to interpret, nothing to convey.

It just is.

And for me, it's part of my DNA.

The world we live in is incomplete. Fragile and blurry.

In the binary world, there are only ones and zeros.

That's perfection.

All you need to get started is an idea.

And then slowly, one command at a time,

you create something new.

Something pure and... true that,

didn't exist before.

Something that never lies or pretends to be something it isn't.

A universe out of nothing.

You take the ugly chaotic world we live in

and you make it perfect.

Andreas?

You were going to show us the latest updates.

Anyone could have answered their questions. In their sleep.

No one is interested in my ideas.

We are interested in your ideas.

But we're also interested in making a profit.

Yeah, I know. Check this out.

What is this?

I've started constructing a more immersive open-world experience.

This can give our users something to aspire to, to dream about, to create...

Well, our users are 12 and 13 year old girls. Get it?

All they have to do is play with dolls and buy our fucking add-ons.

Fame, fashion and friends, Andreas.

Don't forget that.

Oh, sorry... This is Daniel.

Daniel's going to be a consultant here.

Daniel gets business. Listen to him, okay?

Hmm?

I like what you said, it was nice.

Yeah, but who cares?

- He just wants to sell add-ons. - Can I see?

I just thought a tech start-up would be different.

That they would be interested in some new ideas. Take some risks.

This is awesome. How did you get the dolls to react so quickly?

I've built a new layer, so now there's a feedback loop

to anticipate what users want before they want it.

Okay.

Yeah well, don't worry. The boss hates it, so I'll just delete it.

Why? It's brilliant. If Mattias doesn't appreciate it, that's his problem.

- Except that he's the boss. - So? Then why are you still here?

If you want to be creative, quit this damn job, do your own thing. Be your own boss.

People like me just don't run businesses. We consult, advise, maybe are CTOs.

Says who? I just did it.

Started a tech company with only coders, sold it for ten million.

Just think about it.

This is nice.

What are you reading?

The Gutenberg Galaxy. Marshall McLuhan. What's it about?

It's about...

how technology made it possible for knowledge to spread in new ways.

You know before, there was no point in learning to read as there were no books.

That's true.

But then a whole new wave of information came along and so...

Well, everyone can have access to it if they wanted to.

So access made people consume more?

Exactly. People like Mattias will never get it.

They just think they get it, but we've grown up with technology.

It's been a part of us since we were kids, before we could even speak.

We can't let them decide what we should do with it.

Check this out.

This is a streaming system for free music. This is exactly what you're talking about.

A way to listen to every song released,

so that everyone in the world can have access to all music.

Nice. But you know there's already Pirate Bay?

Sure, but give me a step by step guide on how to download a song from Pirate Bay.

Oh, it's easy.

You just go to the website...

search for the torrent you want, download it, open it in a client...

There's different files, right? So first, you have to go through them one by one,

see which one you want...

Yes. True. So then you sort out what you don't want, it downloads...

Yeah, if it downloads and isn't a virus.

Then you have to decide which folder it goes into, what to name it,

how to list the songs so they play in the right order,

according to an artist or an album...

and all of these you have to store on your own hard drive.

This is what I'm talking about. All this enthusiasm,

everything Pirate Bay built, we're going to take to a whole new level.

The world needs freedom from record companies.

and something way better than Pirate Bay.

At first, it was just an idea...

It's a beautiful thought, but won't work. Investors will force you to compromise

until it's no longer beautiful...

Good thing I'm the investor then. I'll put everything I earn into this.

Every day... Every day that we stand up to them,

the authorities begin to understand that we are unstoppable.

Yes!

You know what we're doing here? We're writing history.

- This is yours? - Uhn uhn.

Welcome to Spotify headquarters!

This is where we'll build the world's most beautiful music site.

- And you want me? - I want you to help me.

I need you to help me build the kind of company that can create brilliance.

Okay.

Oh, that's Martin. Martin!

Don't worry, he... He looks like one of them, but he's one of us.

Andreas, nice to meet you! My name is Martin Lorentzon.

Andreas.

I know your boss.

He says you're incredibly good, but annoying as hell.

We need annoying as hell. I want people who think in new ways,

who understand that the whole new era requires whole new approaches.

Welcome aboard.

Welcome aboard?

You are our first employee, CTO.

You'll own more of the company than anyone except me and Martin.

So how should we design it? What do you need?

Okay. The coders will sit in the middle.

Everything flows from here, all the ideas, all the creativity.

We're going to need more ethernet cables, and ceiling electrical outlets.

And everyone on the team will be equal. No hierarchy, no cliques and no titles.

If two people think differently, then it shouldn't matter who has the highest rank.

Best idea wins, no matter what.

So who's going to be on the team?

You have to let me handpick them. We can't use regular coders.

To make the best site in the world, we need the elite.

People who would have never joined a regular start-up.

We need Gunnar Kreitz. I met him at college, computer science.

He's the best programmer in the world.

And Fredrik Niemelä, a prodigy.

The only one with a team that could challenge Gunnar's.

Jon Åslund, Mattias Arrelid, Andreas Mattsson.

We need a great designer, too...

Rasmus Andersson would be perfect.

We can create the world's best coding team.

Like the seven samurai, but coders.

That looks nice!

Oh God, you look so handsome.

Brilliant! Okay, shall we?

There it is! The money shot! The best.

Spotify is about one thing.

Access.

Access gives freedom.

Access makes users independent from the music industry...

And speed. If there's one thing users hate

about Pandora or Last FM, it's buffering.

You don't use Google because it's the best,

it's because it's the fastest.

If Spotify is gonna succeed, speed is key.

Don't forget that!

- Okay, access and speed. - Mhm. Let's do this!

Yes!

When you start programming, you'll merely notice there's no shortcuts.

You have to dare to get your hands dirty.

A little code under your fingernails.

A computer is like a child who doesn't know anything yet.

I have to teach them, and that means everything.

If my instructions are illogical,

incomplete or inadequate, you will get a bug.

And the bug may cause the program to crash, severely.

- Come on! - No...

- Oh! Come, yes. - No...

You want to, come on!

Yes, hi.

Would you mind if introduced you to my good friend Andreas.

He's the quiet type, but his eyes can speak a thousand words.

Okay. So, what are his eyes saying right now?

Here's my card, order whatever you want.

Hi...

He is... Um...

Yeah...

So...

So...?

Have you looked at any congestion control algorithms?

- No. - No.

And that has to be the worst pick-up line in entire world.

Eh... What... What are you interested in? Beer?

Medical science. I'm a student.

I only work here on the weekends.

Okay. Yeah, right, cell biology.

Uhm mh.

- Okay. - What can I get you?

What do you think? Give me something you like.

Okay.

So... tell me about cell biology.

The cell is the most remarkable of all organisms in biology.

Yeah?

It recreates itself, regulates itself.

It's like a little factory that produces whatever is needed to keep running,

and it renews parts that need to be replaced, but it kind of services itself.

And if needed, the production can be changed in an instant.

All the recipes needed to produce what the factory creates

are sort of encoded in the cell's genome.

And the cool thing about it all is that,

Well, it doesn't need any... blueprints, anything like that.

It just regulates itself and it

takes command of itself.

It's fascinating really, how it all just continues to work all on its own...

That was beautiful.

Thanks.

So...

What would you say if I asked you out sometime?

Khovd? Where the hell is that?

No clue, but we have to go there... To Mongolia.

Okay.

The globe decides. That's the rule, okay?

So, tell me. What were you tech nerds celebrating at the bar tonight?

A new streaming service.

Is there any action in that?

Actually, there is. I mean, the record companies and the pirates...

They all try to stop us.

Uhm mh.

So Spotify will create a world without intermediaries.

Where music can flow freely, like water or electricity.

Where people can upload, listen to whatever they want.

Uhm mh.

Create, share, whatever they want. It won't cost a thing.

That was beautiful.

It's done.

Test it.

Now, try something else.

Yeah

Unbelievable!

With help from the whole team, we've made a smoother, faster system.

It's actually a lot faster now and we've reduced the delay. So now the searches...

It's still too slow.

This is basically a masterpiece.

Why should I care about that?

500 milliseconds is too slow.

Why would I bother clicking on a song if I have to wait 500 milliseconds for it?

- How long is acceptable? - Zero!

Zero? That's impossible and Daniel knew it.

The delay between when you click on a link on the internet

and when content is sent from a server, is affected by several factors.

Suddenly, it depends on the amount of content but also on the

type of internet connection, the workload on the network not to mention distribution

which is the distance a cable has to carry data,

I could streamline by adapting the the structure and finding some shortcuts

but really it's just the amount of content that you have control over.

Daniel! Look at this, only 12 month's warranty and it's at 75,000.

That's a colossal amount.

- Andreas! - Yes?

Okay, here's the deal. We can't afford to do this on servers.

I built the entire system on servers.

Okay, but we can't afford the amount of servers we would need to scale up.

You're going to have to build this as a P2P network.

So... Why am I totally speechless right now?

Okay, to explain that, I need to get a bit technical. Try to keep up now.

If you wanted to build a streaming service like Spotify in

2006, you really only had two options.

Number one, to use servers. Okay, I'm server. This is me,

here. I have access to a database.

You can think of it as a big pile of CDs.

My only job is basically to serve you the songs from these CDs. This is you.

When you ask me to, I'll go and pick a CD out of the pile,

I'll read the song you want from here, send it to you, from beginning to the end,

a little at a time

just like how you usually listen to music, it's lightening fast.

The problem is that it's expensive.

Servers are expensive to buy, but they're mainly expensive to run.

They use a lot of electricity, and when they use it, they get

hot, so you need more electricity to run the fans that cool the servers. Okay.

That's why Daniel asked me a moment ago to use option number two,

building a peer-to-peer network.

I'll explain that, too.

Okay, so peer-to-peer was the invention

that laid the foundation for all the services

like Kazaa, Napster, Limewire and of course Pirate Bay.

Now we don't have a server anymore, just a bunch of confused users out there

who are somehow connected to each other via the internet.

All the internet-connected computers on this network

are each other's equals. They are peers.

Okay. The problem is that when we lost the server,

we lost contact with the database.

So the whole world's music is no longer available.

But the users have a few different records each,

and as long as they're willing to share with each other,

we have a nice little communist society on the internet,

but unlike communism, this idea really works.

Now, when you want to listen a specific song, you first ask your neighbors,

"Please, do any of you have the song?"

Since there are billions of songs and only a few neighbors, they'll probably say no.

But they can ask their neighbors, who ask their neighbors,

until you finally find someone who has the song and starts sending it to you.

This way, Spotify doesn't have to buy lots of expensive servers,

but, there is a big disadvantage. See, it takes an agonizingly long time.

It's a cheap solution, and definitely a bad one.

Had Daniel been a real coder, he'd have known that,

and he'd have know that he was asking me to do the impossible.

He has a tendency to do that.

I'll give it a try.

- Hi! - Hello...

- Hungry? - Yeah.

Good!

Sorry.

Hello?

You need to get down here, bring your computer.

What? Why?

Because Per Sundin is here. It's a chance to pitch to him.

Okay. I have to go.

What? Now?

Yes. Sorry.

♪ ...Complicate, then they overcompensate ♪

♪ She running back ♪

♪ She got her own... ♪

Daniel, I've tried to make it faster, but I'm working against the very essence of...

Yeah, but you can do it. It's all good.

We should let one of the datalogists check if it's even possible...

Andreas, of course it's possible.

If anyone can do it, it's you. Okay?

♪ You're my kind of woman ♪

I should be able to optimize the search itself.

Great!

But even so, there are ten more layers that are too slow.

That's him!

Give me your laptop.

♪ Running it, running it, running it You are ♪

♪ You are, you are ♪

♪ Running it, running it, running it You are ♪

Free? What the hell makes you think I'd be interested in free music?

What the hell is wrong with your generation? Huh?

Music can never be free.

If I get another one of these fucking pitches,

I'm gonna make it my personal mission to crush your little shitty company.

You got that?

I hope I've been very, very, very clear with you.

Just make it fast, Andreas. I want him to come crawling back.

Did he really throw it on the ground?

Yeah.

Why?

He is... a little unstable right now.

He wants it to be faster.

I don't even know if it's theoretically possible.

So...

Sometimes when the heart can't pump blood fast enough,

the body finds ways to compensate.

The arteries sort of reshape themselves to create the pressure

that the circulatory system needs.

So I don't know, but maybe you can come up with something new?

The battle between the record companies and Pirate Bay

has now entered a new stage.

It was at five o'clock this morning, the police led by prosecutor Pontén

stormed the underground bunker where Pirate Bay had its servers.

Mr Sundin, what do you think about the Pirate Bay raid?

It's welcome but a little late.

It's nice that the Swedish Government has realized they're not freedom fighters,

but ordinary criminals.

So now, I hope they get the punishment they deserve.

We continue with more headlines.

Hurricane Katrina has brought, Louisiana to a complete standstill,

Katrina rolled from the gulf of Mexico and hit Louisiana at

5am local time. It moves about about 105 miles per hour,

...Pirate Bay had everything in one place.

- A lawsuit against Pirate Bay... - Daniel...

The record companies pushed for this.

Yeah, and?

People like Sundin won't stop and now we have to negotiate with them.

Yeah, we'll have to talk to them.

No! They're the bad guys here, not Pirate Bay.

We've all used that website since we were kids.

We know the people who created them, we respect them.

Yes.

The people who create the technology that you need, care about things like this.

They care about who's gonna control it.

I chose to come to Spotify because I thought it was going to be free.

Andreas, Spotify is a business.

A business?

I don't want to be part of a business that compromises with record companies.

If we make a deal with them, we do it on our terms, not theirs. Or not at all.

I think it was right at this moment,

when I confronted Daniel, that the whole dynamic at Spotify started to change.

What did I tell you? A company needs one leader.

It's alright, Andreas just needs to let it out.

Hey, I met a friend from Gothenburg,

who said he worked with a completely insane coder, like you and Andreas.

Who?

Ludvig Strigeus.

Maybe we can work on that.

Or even working on this peer-search might be something, an option that we...

Hey, Ludvig.

- Hi. - Hey.

I heard about what you're up to, sounds pretty cool.

Okay guys, please welcome Ludvig to the team.

He's just agreed to join Spotify as a consultant.

And we are very grateful and happy about that!

- Great! - Welcome!

This is interesting.

Can we talk for a second?

Ludvig Strigeus?

Without saying anything, not asking, consulting?

If anything, you should be thanking me.

No one knows peer-to-peer better than Ludvig.

Okay. Fine, but, uh... Is this because I expressed my opinion?

No, Andreas. We just bought uTorrent from Ludvig. We'll be able to use his code.

Listen, he's still part of your team. You're the CTO.

Why didn't you ask me?

The best idea wins, your policy, right? He'll run the front end, you the back end.

Andreas. How long are you going to be like this?

Go to sleep. I just need to think about some things.

Hi... Erh...

- Gunnar has an idea. - Yeah?

What if this speed problem we've been having can't be solved with P2P?

Well, it's possible with a server, but Daniel said we have to use P2P.

We'll use P2P. That's what works best and that's fine, that's the way it should be.

But let's say this, um...

Fredrik likes Otis Redding.

The system can figure out that he likes Marvin Gaye and Wilson Pickett, too.

The system prepares and uploads them, then buffers ahead for when it's time to play.

So it's done before it even did the search.

But ten percent of the time

he'll deceive us and decide he doesn't want to listen to Detroit Soul anymore.

He wants to listen to something else, he wants to listen to Vivaldi or Megadeth.

It takes too long. That's... A peer-to-peer system can't do it.

Right but that's when... boom!

We switch from a peer-to-peer system to a server.

Just for that search.

Just for that search.

Like a body switching systems to keep blood pressure steady. Nice one, Gunnar!

Yeah

So we've built a hybrid system.

Okay...

Essentially, it's still peer-to-peer.

It's convenient and easy to scale up.

Ten percent of the time, only when needed, we have the option to switch to a server,

load the first few seconds from there and switch back to P2P when it catches up.

Even unexpected searches respond and the system will keep improving.

It's fantastic.

This is the most sophisticated music player ever built.

It's smart, it's smooth, it's fast.

Wow!

Nah, it's too slow. On random searches, there is a slight delay.

Now we're at 250 milliseconds.

The human ear perceives anything under 200 milliseconds as instantaneous.

- That's 0.05 seconds... - And that's not good enough.

So this is because of the TCP/IP.

I don't know if you know how it works, but basically it's internet architecture.

We have to wait for the ACK from the client,

otherwise we get packet loss. That's a hard red light.

And it's your job to find a way around it.

But that's how the whole fucking internet works!

You're asking for something that's impossible!

If we design a car, we can make the engine bigger

we can make the wheels spin faster,

but we can't build a new road,

just because you don't understand the technology!

Here's the thing Andreas,

I gave you this opportunity.

And I backed you up to.

So either you build the player that I want

or you can go.

You doing okay?

Daniel is the boss, Andreas. Everyone knows that.

The boss...

Andreas...

I know.

When I was a kid...

I was always the nerd.

And... I tried, I...

In school, I was too much and I was too little,

and I had to learn to accept that people like me, we don't have friends.

But I just you know, fantasized that...

I would... I would find my gang. That I'd find...

my avengers.

People who were on the same wavelength as me.

Yeah. Maybe I'm just too...

Can I have that.

Okay.

We know that when our server starts sending data to the client,

it's kind of like when a car pulls up to an intersection and gets a red light.

But what do you do when you see the light about to turn red?

You accelerate.

The idea is to slow down, but everyone speeds up, that's what you do.

- But we can't really... - Yes, we can.

We clone the TCP/IP,

then we do our own implementation of both flow and congestion control.

A big fucking congestion window and no slow start at all.

That's right.

Our only problem is that the timeout is too strict for our purpose.

It prevents us from sending data faster than the network can actually handle.

Yeah sure, we'd get some packet loss, but nobody needs to know about that.

Yeah, okay. But what does that mean in plain language?

Alright, here's the deal. The internet is basically built to be perfect.

No data should be lost.

And for the vast majority of purposes, that's absolutely fine.

After all, the defense industry built it. They have to stop at the red light.

Because if they accidentally crash, all the data is lost.

But fuck that. Fuck the Pentagon.

We're Spotify, if we crash a little bit, it doesn't matter.

The tiny part of the song that gets lost, no one will notice it even existed.

It is simply not audible.

We will build the first protocol that breaks the rules.

The world's first system to be imperfect on purpose.

When we see the red light, we won't slow down.

We will accelerate.

Even if we lose a minuscule part of the song, who cares?

Let's do it!

This is a brand new protocol.

Gunnar and Fredrik applied for a patent this morning.

Whatever happens from here, we've created a nice little piece of computer history.

A unique network protocol that's never been seen before.

The best-designed, most user-friendly,

the most complete music player that ever existed.

♪ You can get it if you really want ♪

♪ You can get it if you really want ♪

It's goddamn perfect!

Yes!

♪ Try and try ♪

- Nice work. - ♪ You'll succeed at last ♪

♪ Persecution you must fear Win or lose you got to ♪

- ♪ Get your share ♪ - Shit, you guys should be proud! Wow.

We got it!

♪ You can get it though Hard it may seem now ♪

♪ You can get it if you really want ♪

♪ You can get it if you really want ♪

♪ You can get it if you really want But you must try ♪

♪ Try and try, try and try ♪

Thanks. Does Lisa still work here?

Yeah, but she's taken a few weeks off.

I'm not sure when she'll be back.

Okay, thanks.

- Have you heard Ama's fancy new title? - No.

Vice President of Engineering at Spotify.

Daniel is reorganizing.

Fredrik has got a new one too, Product Development Director.

Congratulations.

Daniel?

- Do you have a second? - Yeah, what's up?

Reorganizing?

Yeah. It's needed after two years.

So you are giving everyone titles? I mean like...

Head of Engineering and Vice President?

I mean, isn't that what we weren't supposed to do?

This way, everything will be more efficient.

I want everyone to work directly under me, the whole coding team. It's better.

Under you. This is about you... again?

It's the fact that I have to sell the company and I need to have some control.

I know what we need and I need people to get that.

Well, I think you've gotten so caught up being the boss, you somehow

forgot what Spotify is, and what it could be.

- I don't know what that means. - I was your first employee for a reason.

Andreas, maybe life isn't about employment.

Maybe it's about a special project that you get to do,

and when it's done, then... It's all there is.

- Martin! - Hi!

Sophia... Who is that?

Petra Hansson, she's a lawyer.

But we already have a lawyer.

Yeah, but Petra is going to be handling the deals with the record companies.

Daniel.

We have this new functionality that I think you'll want to see.

On the left,

the artist page as it was, and on the right, as it is now.

Our beta testers have given us user data

that allows us to customize the whole experience for them.

- This is fucking good! - Yes, this is unbelievable.

It finally gives us a real edge over the record companies.

- I'm not giving this to them. - No.

- Why not? These offer the prospects for... - We'd be playing into their hands.

The whole point of Spotify was to share power more equally in the market.

We can't go and give the record companies even more power.

Please, Daniel, come on, they own the music you're collecting data from.

Yeah...

OK, here's the deal. We'll have to pay those record companies a one-off fee.

So we need to discuss whether we can keep Spotify free or not.

What? You're not suggesting a paywall are you?

We're discussing whether we can keep any part of Spotify free at all, yes.

The music is already free, it's already up on Pirate Bay, so...

Okay, Andreas, can we talk...

No, wait a minute.

When we started this, we agreed it had to be free.

The younger generation expects it to be free.

Okay, you've started this as a teenage dream, I get it.

You want to do it your way, the easy way.

But it's not a sustainable business model.

That's why we're fumbling around trying to find one now.

We started this with an idea, a principle. I don't know if you understand that.

- Good luck getting the bank to understand. - The bank? The bank?

Why do you let the bank run your life? Who cares what they think?

Okay, listen to me.

Either you accept that you have to make major concessions and

fast or we're done working together.

Okay. Then I guess we're done.

- Thank you for your time. - Petra, what are you doing?

It's been great, but I can't work like this.

Petra!

Good.

Daniel, we have the technology now.

We've built something beautiful that everyone would want to use.

We're almost out of money.

- We'll go bankrupt. - No, not bankrupt.

It's gonna be a bit tough, but if we launch now, even without rights,

we'll crush all the other streaming services within weeks.

While the record companies are suing our asses off.

They need us. We will be too big to fail.

I want Petra to come back.

What?

I want Petra to come back.

You know, it's still Spotify. It's still our thing Andreas.

Really? Daniel only gave up 20% of the company.

- Are you coming? - No.

Three bottles of champagne.

- Are you okay? - Yeah.

Tech is changing. But people will always be people.

They need a leader, a star that shines brighter than everyone else.

But this is the opposite of what we said we would do.

This is reality, Andreas.

And if you'll just stop fighting it, you'll find yourself rich as hell.

Show some leadership, come on.

That's the thing, we have a responsibility It was you, me and Daniel in the office.

I own more of Spotify than anyone else after you two.

No, you don't.

We needed Ludvig, so we gave him 5%.

Code.

It can be beautiful.

When I learned to program, I saw that it was

pure. No ambiguities.

Spotify was the purest, most beautiful thing I ever created.

Yet all the layers of code, all the algorithms,

turned out to be more and more inadequate,

and more illogical than I could bear.

There were bugs that left me stuck in perpetual segmentation errors.

I was in the wrong place in the memory.

It was time to do a hard reset of the whole system

and realize that everyone is disposable.

This is the final call to flight SA7062 to Singapore.

That's not what really happened.

Subtitle translation by: Adefoluke Adebayo