Is Spotify Swedish? I don’t know. Swedes started it, certainly. But then the owners went and listed it on the New York and not the Stockholm Stock Exchange. They have a thousand or so employees here, but they have more in the US. The employees here pay taxes here of course, but Spotify is registered in Luxembourg so there go any tax wins for the state – plus founder and largest owner Daniel Ek manages his taxes through a bunch of companies in countries that have lots of palm trees, fancy accountants and empty offices ().
But OK, it’s pretty Swedish anyway, sort of, and we can point to our high innovation index ranking (2nd in the world – see earlier post) for a way of getting some Spotify cred. Yay Swedish teachers!
So here’s the Spotify news: It’s still not not that profitable. 13 years now, and really barely a cent in the plus column (). The report released today shows it’s still growing faster than your teenage nephew (who’s probably a paying Spotify member come to think of it), but there’s more competition than ever. (In the US, Apple Music has more subscribers than Spotify, even if Spotify has more overall users – .) The number of paying Spotify members increased by 31%, which, frankly, seems darn good – but, alas, the market expected a few more. When that didn’t materialize, Spotify stock took a hit ().
Spotify and its backers are hoping that its foray into podcasting will take off, and that Spotify will be the giant everyone thinks it is. Too bad that that won’t help Sweden that much.