Spotify has announced plans to begin trading on the New York stock exchange on 3 April.
The music streaming service’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, told investors during a public webcast that the company will become profitable to fend off rivals including Apple Music (NASDAQ: AAPL).
The 12-year old company has over 100 million users and the company’s revenue has grown by 39 percent to €4.09 billion (£3.61 billion) in 2017 from €2.95 billion (£2.6 billion) the year previous.
Ek told listeners on Thursday that Spotify is the world’s largest streaming platform – “nobody else has the global scale that we’ve already built.”
The service’s “freemium” platform has previously caused controversy after Taylor Swift chose to temporarily remove her music from Spotify in 2015.
Chief product officer Gustav Sodorstrom, however, explained the importance of the free option.
“One: it reaches the millions of consumers who are still on the fence about paying for music, which brings them into our ecosystem,” he said.
“Two: It allows us to learn from the biggest possible group of music fans in the world. And three: Once they have Spotify on their phone, car speaker and devices, music simply becomes a much bigger part of their lives, and the more they engage, the more likely they are to discover that music is an important part of their life worth paying for.”
Spotify’s stock will be available to investors via a direct listing, without the traditional underwriters.
“It’s not about the pomp and circumstance,” said Ek, who will not be on the trading floor when the shares go live. “I think the traditional model of taking a company public isn’t a good fit for us.”
According to calculations by Reuters, the streaming platform is valued at an estimated $19 billion, based on private transactions.