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Spotify Technology S.A. is an international media services provider. It is legally domiciled in Luxembourg and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.
Founded in 2006, the company’s primary business is providing an audio streaming platform, the “Spotify” platform, that provides DRM-restricted music, videos and podcasts from record labels and media companies. As a freemium service, basic features are free with advertisements or automatic music videos, while additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions.
Launched in October 2008, the Spotify platform provides access to over 50 million tracks. Users can browse by parameters such as artist, album, or genre, and can create, edit, and share playlists. Spotify is available in most of Europe and the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Africa and Asia, and on most modern devices, including Windows, macOS, and Linux computers, and iOS, and Android smartphones and tablets. As of April 2020, the company had 286 million monthly active users, including 130 million paying subscribers.
Unlike physical or download sales, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties based on the number of artist streams as a proportion of total songs streamed. It distributes approximately 70% of its total revenue to rights holders, who then pay artists based on their individual agreements. Spotify has faced criticism from artists and producers including Taylor Swift and Thom Yorke, who have argued that it does not fairly compensate musicians. In 2017, as part of its efforts to renegotiate license deals for an interest in going public, Spotify announced that artists would be able to make albums temporarily exclusive to paid subscribers if the albums are part of Universal Music Group or the Merlin Network.
Spotify’s international headquarters are in Stockholm, Sweden, though each region has its own headquarters. Since February 2018, it has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange and in September 2018, the company relocated its New York City offices to 4 World Trade Center.