After keeping the music industry in suspense for quite some time, Spotify has finally filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol “SPOT.” The move, which has been highly anticipated, was actually filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission back in late December. The streaming giant seems to be hoping to make shares available to the public within the first quarter of 2018.
Currently, Spotify is publicly valued at about $15 billion, so the company’s impact on the entire music industry cannot really be overstated. Given its outsized importance, whether the move from private to public succeeds or fails will ultimately affect the music that will dominate the industry in the future.
Among the information included in the paperwork, Spotify claimed that it had a user base nearly double that of Apple Music, its closest competitor, including 159 million monthly active users and 71 million premium subscribers as of December 31. As well, last year, Spotify earned nearly $5 billion in revenue, up more than 38 percent from the $3.6 billion it raked in during 2016. However, this shouldn’t be discussed without clarifying that the company is still operating a massive net loss. As powerful as it is, the streaming business model is clearly not without its faults.
That being said, hopefully, they will be going public without delays soon, given that, before word of their filing got out, Spotify was slapped with a massive copyright-infringement lawsuit by Wixen Music Publishing. Wixen is seeking at least $1.6 billion, alleging that the streaming company is using songs found in Wixen’s administrative catalog without the necessary licenses or compensation.
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