Five years ago today a brand new music service launched to the public in a country strongly associated with illegal file-sharing. On October 7 2008, in the back yard of The Pirate Bay, streaming music service Spotify went online with its quest to turn pirates into customers. Sixty short months later and the major labels and more than 24 million users are on board, but in the early days the idea of yet more Swedes giving away music was hardly attractive.

In a world where all kinds of entertainment media is available for free download with a couple of clicks, we have been led to believe that competing with such a reality is not just hard, but virtually impossible.

So who could have imagined then that after its birth five years ago today (during the glory years of The Pirate Bay no less) Spotify would develop into a hugely successful consumer product that has not only proven popular with music lovers around the world, but with pirates past and present.

Against the odds, Spotify has gone beyond turning many dedicated file-sharers into revenue-generating customers, it has made them happy ones too.

Earlier this year Spotify revealed it had signed up 24 million users worldwide, 18 million to the ad-supported service and 6 million to a paid subscription. But as revealed by company founder Daniel Ek, even greater goals are being eyed.

“My goal is to not just convert the 24 million into buying a subscription,” Ek said. “My goal is to get 1 billion using streaming services rather than a piracy service.”

But during the early days in Spotify’s Swedish homeland, a problem persisted. By failing to respond to customer needs a content availability vacuum had formed, and it came as no surprise to Spotify’s Scandinavia CEO Jonathan Forster that sites like The Pirate Bay were thriving.

“It is a society that loves music and when the internet exploded it was no surprise that it took place in Sweden. In the absence of a legal service, people used whatever was available,” Forster told Metro today.

But despite a huge customer base in waiting and a dream of luring people away from unauthorized sources en masse, Spotify faced problems with the labels.

“When I started at Spotify and realized that we really had not even talked to any of the majors, I felt that this would be difficult,” Forster explains.

So Spotify embarked on a mission to convince the record companies that making their catalogs available on an ad-supported basis would be the way to go. However – and perhaps unsurprisingly given the track records of some of their countrymen before them – they were instead treated as if they were creating a piracy service of their own.

“[The labels] were very polite, but utterly amazed at what we wanted to do,” Forster recalls. “In their eyes we were just a bunch of Swedes who wanted to take their music and give it away for free. We were no different than the people behind the Pirate Bay for them.”

But Spotify refused to give in and two years later the company netted its first license agreements and is now promoted heavily by the labels. According to Rasmus Fleischer, former Piratbyran member and author of award-wining thesis “The music’s political economy,” some of Spotify’s success in Sweden can be attributed to the entertainment companies’ legal victories against The Pirate Bay and the streaming service’s reputation for stirring things up.

“On a symbolic level, it was incredibly significant,” Fleischer says. “The history of Spotify has been built in the Swedish press and media as a rebel company that has rebelled against an outdated recording industry.”

The art of rebellion against the entertainment industries was perfected by The Pirate Bay during the last decade and as a result the site made itself some dangerous rivals. But interestingly while the most powerful forces in the world have failed to take it down, it’s companies like Spotify that could end up becoming its most serious adversary yet.

That, however, will rely on the company maintaining its rebellious streak, positive image and excellent product at a fair price. It will be interesting to see if it can keep that up.