Spotify Goes Public

On April 3rd 2018, Spotify began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with an Initial Public Offering (IPO), and individual stocks selling for an opening price of $169 a share. Spotify is the world's largest music streaming service with 71 million paying subscribers which puts it ahead of Apple Music which has 36 million paid subscribers. Its opening per share stock price gave the company a value of $29 billion.

Spotify was launched in Sweden in 2008 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. The idea was to provide those who engaged in illegal downloading, an affordable alternative. Its free ad based streaming service was first, but was quickly followed by its paid subscription version. The company received a $100 million infusion of cash in 2011, and with that money it was able to launch its platform in the United States.