Spotify Eyes IPO

Spotify has revealed that it has surpassed 60 million paying subscribers, putting the Swedish streaming giant well ahead of closest rival Apple Music. Having weathered the controversy (or lack of) around its use of ‘fake artists’ last month, Spotify is charging ahead in advance of plans for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) that many predict will take place later this year. So expect more stats that fluff up the popularity of the service in the build up to this.

Spotify had previously reported 50 million subscribers in March alongside 140 million ‘active’ users including subscription and ad-funded tiers earlier this summer.

In comparison, Apple Music, which launched in 2015 reported 27m users in June this year. This means that Spotify now has over double the subscribers of its closest competitor.

As this chart over at business insider shows, Spotify growth has greatly outpaced that of Apple Music. It seems that users generally want strongly personalised features such as Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists and daily mixes as opposed to celebrity endorsements and the odd exclusive album release.

Spotify is widely predicted to be preparing for a direct listing that will enable insiders and early stockholders to directly sell their shares in the company on an exchange without going fully public. The streaming service was last valued by private market investors at $8.5 billion in 2015 and would likely be the first large company to go public via direct listing.