James Delahunty
5 Jan 2018 3:13
More than 70 million users now pay a premium subscription fee for unlimited music streaming from Stockholm-based Spotify.
Spotify is the largest music streaming service in the world, fending off competition from Apple Inc. and from Amazon and others. The Apple Music service counts 30 million subscribers as of September, but its launch in June 2015 did not significantly impact Spotify as had been anticipated. Instead, Spotify has gone from strength to strength, rapidly adding millions of paying subscribers.
If you count Spotify users who stream for free on the ad-supported platform, then Spotify counts around 140 million active users.
Last year, Spotify was valued at around $19 billion and has started 2018 with a confidential filing with a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an IPO. Spotify is targeting a direct listing at some point in Q1 2018.
Spotify is also the target of a $1.6 billion lawsuit from Wixen Music Publishing, alleging that the music streaming service failed to obtain necessary "mechanical licenses" for many songs in its catalog.