Spotify is going public on the New York Stock Exchange, according to Bloomberg and Axios. The music streaming giant reportedly filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission back in December and is looking to make its shares public by the first quarter of this year.
This move has been coming for a while for Spotify, the largest paid music-streaming with a self-reported 60 million subscribers. In 2016, Spotify hired Paul Vogel as its first Head of Investor Relations, a big hint that it was going to file for an IPO. That year, the company also managed to raise a $1 billion debt round, which in layman's terms gave it the cushion to eventually go public. And last year, Spotify signed licensing deals with all three major record labels (Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group), allowing them to keep some songs exclusive to its paying subscribers.
The news comes a day after Wixen Music Publishing filed a $1.6 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against Spotify, claiming that the streaming service used its administrative catalog without the required licenses and compensation. Spotify hasn't issued a comment on the case or the stock market news.
Finance talks aside, Spotify will probably be staying hot for a while. A report published by BuzzAngle Music on Wednesday noted that while music downloads fell, streaming numbers increased by over 50 percent in 2017.
