The Swedish music streaming platform continues to grow. Founded in 2006 in Stockholm by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify launched its services to the public in 2008. Today, the platform counts nearly 140 million active listeners, including paid subscribers and free users. It is present in 60 countries and offers a catalog of more than 30 million titles.
On January 4th 2018, the company proudly announced on Twitter that it had reached 70 million subscribers worldwide.
Nevertheless, the application took a long time to take off. It took 6 years to cross the threshold of 10 million paying subscribers in May 2014. After that, everything accelerated and Spotify quickly established itself as the market leader.
The group took 13 months to reach the threshold of 20 million, then 9 months to reach 30 million in March 2016 and only 6 months to reach the 40 million in September. Then, 50 million in March 2017, 60,000 million in July, and finally 70 million for the month of January 2018. The service has earned 10 million new subscribers in the space of seven months.
With its current 70 million subscribers, Spotify is consolidating its position as the world’s leading music streaming service. For comparison, its main competitor, Apple Music, launched in 2015, only claimed 30 million subscribers in September.
This remarkable example of growth demonstrates the change in the attitude of users who prefer to join a paid online music service, now the first mode of listening music, rather than resort to illegal downloading. Also, this growth could comfort future Spotify investors, whose Initial Public Offering (IPO) seems to materialize a little more every day.
In fact, according to some American press sources, the Swedish start-up discussed a potential IPO confidentially at the end of December with the US stock-exchange regulator, the SEC. Valued at around 20 billion dollars, the company wishes to make its IPO via a direct listing rather than through a traditional public offering, which will allow it to overcome certain constraints and save some costs associated with a traditional IPO.
A bright future seems to be emerging for Spotify, which will soon be celebrating its 10th anniversary!
