Pretty ironic considering they bootstrapped the service with pirated music. But they've never actually cared about music — they started as an ad platform and music was the cheapest option for them to attract eyeballs.
It's not obvious to US English speakers but "spot" was ad industry jargon and became the word for "TV commercial" in several European languages. It's so gross that this ever slid through as a brand for a music app. We've descended so far...Music app branding started with Wesley Willis jokes!
From what they've said, it's about "spotting" and "identifying" music and music trends. But it seems like mostly it was just a somewhat nonsense word that was easy to remember and whose domain name was available.
Especially since it's popular as a paid service without ads.
According to Ek, the company's title was initially misheard from a name shouted by Lorentzon. Later they conceived a portmanteau of "spot" and "identify".
IP laws are broken, keep extending protection, and do not prevent distribution exclusivity.
I could sell a license to Bob who can sell my arts to you. But I won't give a license to Alice to even be able to enjoy the art for the fee I charged Bob, and I can tell Bob to do the same and not give it away to Alice at any cost. The law would say that's fine, and let's even arrest Bob if he ever sells to Alice.
So, while "spotify" meaning to add ads, might be fun theory, it does make a lot of sense from nordics point of view..
Swedish is Scandinavian/Germanic, close to Norwegian, etc (Finland is Nordic, but is not Scandinavian). Finnish is Finno-Ugric, close to Estonian and Hungarian (yes).
This reminds me of the phenomenon of imported words being used in another language, but using a less common definitions of the word. For example I'm told "Oldtimer" is a vintage car in German, but most Americans would say it was an older or experienced person. Maybe "Spotify" could also mean something giving you acne.
Ek's initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue.
/s
But I get you, doing research is hard.