Spotify to raise Half-Billion dollars from private investors
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Word has it that Spotify is about to get a lot richer. The music-streaming service is rumored to be raising between $500 million and $600 million from investors, according to The Wall Street Journal. That amount of cash could boost the company's total funding to more than $1 billion.
Since coming on the scene, Spotify has competed neck and neck with similar services, like Pandora, Rdio and Google Play Music. It's risen to become one of the more prevalent services and announced earlier this month that it had reached 15 million paid subscribers and 60 million active users worldwide -- that's a 50 percent increase from last May. This big user base and surge in popularity has likely wowed investors.
A key component in Spotify's growth has been its willingness to let users stream music to mobile devices for free. Spotify's paid service costs customers $9.99 per month and allows for offline listening, no ads and improved sound quality. The company pays roughly 70 percent of its revenue for royalties to artists and companies that hold the rights to the music.
Spotify is currently valued at more than $5 billion, according to the Journal.
Spotify is about to invade mainstream. Playstation consoles about to get an app and will probably my most used app on mah PS4 next to youtube. Spotify ain't playing, bitches.
Hopefully this will give them the capital to invest heavily in new technology for staggering releases, and allow them to negotiate better deals with labels re: paying song writers, etc.
