The Industry
Episode 2 of The Playlist follows Per Sundin during the chaos of the early 2000s. With the music industry on its knees and the people rebelling against Per’s desire to take Pirate Bay to court, things aren’t looking good. ..
The defence team at the courthouse has asked for half of the charges against them to be dropped, and unfortunately they’ve also gained public sympathy too. Given how expensive CDs are now, these men that own Pirate Bay present themselves as Robin Hood figures; they take music from the rich and give it to the poor.
In the early days of 2013, Per Sundin was in a difficult situation. CD sales were down and he had to lay off staff. That was tough to hear, and their raids against Pirate Bay servers were not working. It felt like the Hydra being slain - they eliminated one server, but two or three more popped up. Unfortunately, Per Sundin learned that since the latest raid, Pirate Bay traffic had doubled. ..
As a corporate lawyer, Mats even starts downloading some music at a party. When Per finds out this is from Pirate Bay, he makes an example of him and decides to take some of his documents. Per calls Mats out for the hypocrisy of it all, especially as he’s come out of this looking the worse for wear, forced to lay off 60 staff members recently. Unfortunately, this scene also negatively affects Per’s marriage too, with his wife humiliated and angry that Per acted the way that he did.
Per met with Peter Sunde, the co-founder of Pirate Bay, and attempted to bargain with him. Peter brought up the idea of touring and merch, pointing out Per could make his money back that way if they just worked together. That won’t fly, and Per’s meeting eventually ends fruitlessly…but not without Per doubling his efforts to take them to court over copyright infringement. Per is confident that they’re going to come out of this on top. ..
This brings us up to our current timeline, with Per encouraged to meet Daniel Ek but waving it away as another poor business transaction. This time we see Daniel’s confrontation outside from a new light, with Per’s anger at free music built up over time from the ongoing Pirate Bay saga.
In the car leaving the area, Per questions whether he’s getting too old for this and losing his touch. Still, he meets with Bobbi, Daniel’s old friend and the singer from the club last episode. He wants to try and sign her up to Sony music. Interestingly, Daniel shows up at the studio and this time, Per hears his pitch out… and he’s impressed. He finally gets it, likening Spotify to a digital jukebox.
Per Sundin and Lucian meet up to discuss the situation. They are both frustrated with the way things are going and they know that they can’t keep going like this. They need a way out, but they don’t know what it is. They come up with a plan and it involves working with Spotify. However, the big boss decides to delay the project until after the Pirate Bay trial is over. This makes Per very upset, but he finds a lifeline in an old friend called Lucian. While they try to work with Spotify, the verdict for the Pirate Bay trial goes through. The trio of creators are imprisoned for a year and found guilty.
Meanwhile, the others celebrate their new deal as they manage to get Spotify over the starting line after all. As the camera pans out, we see that they’re actually listening to Avicii.
The Episode Review
The second episode of The Playlist does a decent job switching perspectives and showing things from Per Sundin’s point of view. Seeing the way these timelines start to interweave and intersect is one of the best parts of this series and witnessing all the moving parts that have gone into setting up Spotify and getting around the difficulties that initially entailed, has been thoroughly enjoyable and fascinating to watch.
The Playlist is a well-paced show that doesn’t feel like it’s constantly going for the jugular. The tone is consistent, and there’s never a moment where it feels like it’s going to lose its way. This could be one of the better shows to release this year.
