In Spotify’s defense, they used the pirated data only to show a proof of concept to the copyright holders, and that use was sanctioned by the local rights holders organization STIM.
The copyright holders then approved their concept, and subsequently Spotify got the rights to offer their service to customers. Everybody won.
That’s not entirely true, in Spotify’s early days you could upload files to the service and listen to songs uploaded by other people. I think the majority of any song I wanted to listen to before they went Europe-only for a time was “pirated”.
Indeed. I remember there was one song that used a pirated variant and you could tell because it had an obvious artifact that was accidentally introduced in a pirated copy of the song!
The copyright holders then approved their concept, and subsequently Spotify got the rights to offer their service to customers. Everybody won.