Spotify Preps To Go Public

Spotify Preps To Go Public

The streaming titan Spotify sets its eyes to the sky as it prepares to go public. Music lovers across the world use the platform and have been using it more than Apple Music.  More than 60 million people subscribe to Spotify’s service, instead of Apple Music, which has 27 million people.

There are a few differences and similarities between the two streaming services. Apple allows a free three month trial period, and Spotify comes free automatically.  Apple comes automatically installed on Apple products, whereas Spotify comes as an app for operating systems. One big advantage Apple has is the ability to allow for exclusive early listening for albums, by paying large sums of money to record labels and studios.  It is a huge advantage for Apple and their fans; however, Spotify is still the go to service for streaming music.

Spotify is getting ready for “direct listing,” which allows the company to go public without having to IPO. Instead of the company, insiders will be able to sell shares of stock to the market.  This is very unusual for a company to do, and draws a lot of skepticism as well. Should the company choose this route, it will lose hundreds of millions of dollars proceeding the IPO, because the process of an IPO involves banks, investors and institutional investors to determine a price for it to debut.

Spotify could gain momentum after an IPO by doing a secondary offering in order to raise cash. The company says it is already on track to finish this process by the end of the year, which had previously been reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company, however, has been fueled by many developments, some of which are industry leading.

Discover Weekly is Spotify’s weekly updated personalize playlist.  It is the top choice for music fans to find new songs and new artists to love. It reached over 40 million users before the first year, and was followed up by Release Radar, which is specifically for newly released tracks.  Apple and Soundcloud have all tried to replicate this, but Spotify is the only company to have done it as successfully as they have.

Initially, Spotify had bad luck with artists, especially with handing out royalties.  Payouts have become much bigger as the platform has gained subscribers and momentum, surpassing the other streaming mediums.  With the cash and leverage the company has built, it has lured artists such as Taylor Swift to their platform.

With Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home, streaming music is much easier and more enjoyable now than ever before. Even though Alexa has it’s own Amazon Prime Music, Spotify is one of Google Home’s premier partners.  It is already more popular and stronger for dedicated music streaming with Google Music and Pandora, and Google Home allows the platform to be ad free, which is a huge plus. Google Home already has a leg up in the industry before Apple releases their HomePod speakers soon.

With Spotify not slowing down on streaming and growing in popularity, the company will continue to lead the industry in music streaming.