Every rich person broke the law to get there.

Was it even possible to make a legal Spotify? I don't recall that any of the music labels were actually renting out MP3s.

It depends on exactly what Spotify does for you. Launchcast was a pioneer of personalized internet radio, starting in 1999. Pandora offered a similar service in 2005. Both of those services claimed legality through mechanical licenses for non-interactive play.

In the ~ 2005-2008 time frame, many monthly services sprang up to offer play any song from their catalog on demand, along with limited downloading, based on Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM program. Services included Yahoo Music Unlimited, Napster to Go (lol), (Real) Rhapsody, MSN Music and a bunch more. Afaik, this was all legal, but Microsoft shut down the DRM program with, I think, very little discussion as to why (but probably had to do with lack of market share in portable players)

I do recall some issues with the catalog on Yahoo Music Unlimited where the non-interactive catalog was bigger than the interactive catalog, because non-interactive has mechanical licensing and interactive play requires an intetactive licensing exercise between the rightsholders and the service provider.

If you're building an electronic device, "the next best gadget AI" , with a brand new Bluetooth chip that can communicate over 5 km by using some radioactive material, but you don't know whether it will be a success or not, you face two situations :

1. You do all government certifications like FCC, recycling, pollution, security, backed with scientific research that your chip is ok. This will cost a lot of money and time and might prevent you from reaching the market quickly.

2. You start selling asap as a Prototype. You make money and you can start the whole certification process. (or not).

The concept of Prototype is legal in many countries, there's often an official threshold of product sold at which your product is not a prototype anymore.

> Are you recommending to break the law or are you being sarcastic?

Does it have to be either of those?

They're just summarizing the lesson they see.