At the end of 2019, Spotify was worth $27.57 billion, with 65% of it being owned by just six parties: the firm’s co-founders, Daniel Elk and Martin Lorentzon have 30.6% between them, Tencent Holdings Ltd. has 9.1%, and a run of three asset-management specialists holding hold 25% - Gifford has 11.8%, Morgan Stanley has 7.3%, and T.Rowe Price Associates 6.2%. Sony and Universal continue to jointly own between six percent and seven percent of Spotify.

Spotify has acquired The Ringer, a media company that includes culture website and massive podcast operation. This is the fourth podcast company acquisition Spotify has made in the last 12 months - last year it spent about $400 million to buy Gimlet Media, Anchor FM, and Parcast, announcing a year ago they intend to spend $500 million on its podcasting effort. Spotify hopes that adding a podcast business to its core music service will help them bring in new users, and keep existing users around longer. Music industry analysts say there are the first signs of the new company that Spotify is building – and they point to a very different and much bolder future.

Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’ is the most played song on Spotify with 2.3 billion streams, earning the singer just over £7 million. Drake's ‘One Dance’ is the second most streamed song with over 1.7 billion plays and £6 million in profits, and Post Malone’s ‘Rockstar’ came third with 1.7 billion streams and £5.8 million in royalties. Four of Sheeran's tracks make the top 100 most streamed on Spotify - collectively 'Shape of You', 'Thinking Out Loud', 'Perfect' and 'Photograph' have had 6.1 billion plays, and earned an estimated £21 million. On average, Spotify pays artists an estimated £0.0034p for every stream on the platform.

Spotify has unveiled its annual Spotify Wrapped which tells its users what artists, songs, genres, and podcasts they listened to most in 2019, and 2010s overall as well. My Decade Wrapped gives Spotify users a chance to look back on the music that defined each of their years throughout the 2010s. TechCrunch...

Drake was named Spotify's most-streamed artist of the 2010s with more than 28 billion streams of his songs. His most popular song, 'One Dance', played 1.7 billion times alone, but it wasn't the most-streamed one of the decade - Ed Sheeran's 'Shape Of You' is decade's most listened-to track with 2.4 billion streams. 2019's biggest […]

Spotify Family Mix “is simultaneously bringing my family together and tearing it apart”, one Twitter user wrote about a new plan for a shared Spotify account where family members can see everybody else's most played tracks. One other said “I have never felt so exposed", and then there are some people saying it is the […]

"I think we are in the process of creating a more fair and equal music industry than it’s ever been in the past," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in an expansive new interview with the Freakonomics Radio podcast. He claims that more recording artists can make a full-time living now than they could in the […]

"I don’t use Spotify. I think all those streaming services are… the new MTV, the new gatekeepers... they’re all just ripping everyone off. You can have your online existence, but trying to suck on Spotify’s sweet sweetness is just a waste of time for me" Julian Casablancas says in a Billboard interview. The way he […]

Spotify has partnered up with Ancestry.com to offer playlists based on one’s genetic heritage. This means a collection of music that’s based on all the different regions in one’s genetic code. So, somebody with japanese ancestors should expect Mitski, or Oathbreaker if they are of belgian descendance. There's a catch: Ancestry’s terms of service requires […]

Two weeks after Spotify removed music by R Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion from its editorial playlists, in accordance with its new "hateful conduct" policy, the streaming platform will restore music by the latter in response to a backlash from the industry and its own staff. Spotify announced the "hate conduct and hateful conduct" policy on […]

Spotify will pay out $112m in a settlement agreement, following two lawsuits that claimed songwriters hadn’t been paid enough in royalties for their work being streamed on the service. The class action, a combination of the two lawsuits, originally came from David Lowery, an musicians’ rights advocate from the band Camper Van Beethoven, and Melissa […]