Google to Snap Up Spotify?

Conspiracy theorists of the world unite and take over, following fevered speculation that Google is planning to splash out on Spotify. Join The Gen for a game of music tech speculation- where two plus two always equals five!

According to Recode, Google’s Chief Business Officer Omid Kordestani is reportedly joining the board of Spotify– causing most tech news sites to lose their collective minds in the heat, though our friends at Music Ally published some typically even handed analysis here.

This recent report in the New York Post claimed that Google is in the market to snap up a streaming service despite of course already having one with ‘Google Play Music All Access’ and preparing for the launch of another with YouTube’s subscription service- a recent bone of serious contention with independent label owners and trade bodies.

With curation the current aim of the streaming game, Google also recently purchased Songza to enhance its existing service.

The Recode article also cites new YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki as expressing an interest in acquiring Spotify should it ever become available, though the price tag is estimated at a cool $10bn. This was accompanied by The Guardian’s ‘Seven reasons why Google might buy Spotify’.

Spotify, with 40m users and 10m paying subscribers is currently the biggest subscription based music streaming service in the world and this in itself makes it attractive to the search giant – though such a purchase is a dystopian vision for many artists and rights owners given the recent YouTube and independent labels royalties fiasco.