The Financial Times published a list of the top 50 tech entrepreneurs in Europe, and the rankings included several key players from the music industry. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took the top spot. SoundCloud’s duo of Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss ranked No. 5. The team at Shazam – Chris Barton, Avery Wang, Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Muckerjee, and Andrew Fisher – secured the No. 18 spot.
The list of CEOs and founders was compiled with the help of Founders Forum. Any nominees had to either be European nationals or live in Europe while running a tech company.
Europe’s music market has taken some different paths than the American one. The Scandinavian region in particular has shown positive growth for subscription streaming, and several European countries are pushing to expand their tech infrastructure for digital radio.