After months of anticipation, Spotify is finally going public. Earlier this afternoon, the music-streaming giant completed the requisite paperwork with the SEC and will file for an IPO for an estimated $1 billion. Spotify will soon be listed under the ticker symbol SPOT on the New York Stock Exchange.
Over the past few months, Spotify has continued to exhibit impressive growth. Over the past seven and a half months alone, for example, Spotify has seen its subscriber base increase by 16%. As it stands now, Spotify boasts more than 71 million subscribers, a figure which doesn’t even take into account the millions of Spotify users who take advantage of the company’s ad-supported tier. Cumulatively, there are now 159 million users who use Spotify every single month.
Incidentally, Apple Music — which does not offer an ad-supported tier — currently has 36 million subscribers, though some speculate Apple Music will overtake Spotify later this year with respect to paid subscribers.
Spotify’s F-1 Statement can be viewed over here and reads in part:
Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators.
When we launched our Service in 2008, music industry revenues had been in decline, with total global recorded music industry revenues falling from $23.8 billion in 1999 to $16.9 billion in 2008. Growth in piracy and digital distribution were disrupting the industry. People were listening to plenty of music, but the market needed a better way for artists to monetize their music and consumers needed a legal and simpler way to listen. We set out to reimagine the music industry and to provide a better way for both artists and consumers to benefit from the digital transformation of the music industry. Spotify was founded on the belief that music is universal and that streaming is a more robust and seamless access model that benefits both artists and music fans.
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According to the company, shares have traded as high as $132.50 on private markets, which would give the company a valuation over $23 billion based on ordinary shares outstanding as of February 22.
Notably, the company was last valued at $19 billion this past December and $16 billion just a few months before that.
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