

Against something this sweeping, it’s hard to see the episode where the CEO realises he might be neurodiverse as anything other than filler. The second, for example, works hard to put Spotify’s rise in a broader cultural context we see record labels dying on the vine, looking for something – anything – to keep them afloat before Ek breezes in and shows them the future of greatest damage limitation. Some episodes are undoubtedly stronger than others. Here, it means we have to sit through hour after hour of quibbles about the finer details of the thing on your phone that lets you listen to podcasts. When Akira Kurosawa’s thriller Rashômon used this trick, it worked because it was a life or death story. However, this approach makes The Playlist a frustratingly bitty watch.

The smart thing was always going to involve sharing the narrative around.

Perhaps it’s because this wasn’t written by Aaron Sorkin, but there is no violent psychodrama propelling him along. He’s more reasonable, more identifiably human. Ek, at least in this portrayal, is no Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
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You can see why the producers wanted to tackle the series like this. Putting their arguments across … The Playlist Photograph: Netflix An entire team was responsible for its success and they each get to put their argument across. An episode about the lawyer who laid the groundwork for compromise with record labels. There is an episode about the app’s chief coder, who battled to strive for a perfection that had never existed before. Episode two is about a music executive who, terrified by filesharing’s gutting of the industry he loves, relents and gets into bed with Spotify. The Playlist has six episodes, all told from the perspective of someone integral to Spotify’s success. Immediately we have a much more interesting show. Then, in its dying gasp, another character turns to the camera and says “What the hell? That’s not how it happened.” If this was a US show, you sense that this would be the entire series. We see him take this frustration and use it to create Spotify, despite widespread obstruction from the music industry, climaxing with a heartrending sequence of him and his programmers finally telling the world about his magical toy that lets you listen to any song for free. When we meet him, he is trapped in a job he is too good for, hanging out with his mother and being told he is too undereducated for a job at Google. Episode one, for instance, is all about Ek, played with tremendous stroppiness by Fortitude’s Edvin Endre.
