> Sweden must also be able to "offer competitive salaries, generous benefits and stock options" for staff, allowing some of the brightest talents to become part-owners in emerging business, they say.

> In the Nordic nation, income from stock options is currently counted as income from employment and is therefore taxed at 70 percent. By contrast tax rates are between 15 and 20 percent in the US and 25 percent in Germany, the letter explains.

Tax issues aside, Spotify is pretty notorious for not paying that well, even by European standards. I can't really understand why a developer's gross salary should be lower in Spotify than in say, Soundcloud in Berlin for example, where it's a lot cheaper to live in.