INTRODUCTION

(remember to include Spotify sea and Spotify global)

Spotify is a music streaming platform, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. Spotify provides
a freemium service that gives users access to millions of songs and other content from
creators all over the world. Basic features such as choosing what you want to listen to,
receiving recommendations from Spotify’s own set of playlists, building one’s collections of
music and seeing what friends, artists and celebrities listen to. However, users who upgrade
to Spotify premium can enjoy the basic features that Spotify offers undisturbed by
advertisements, and enjoy improved higher music quality. Spotify is available across a range
of devices, which includes but are not limited to computers, phones, and tablets.

Spotify is available in most of Europe, most of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, and parts of Asia. It is available for most modern devices, including Windows, macOS,
and Linux computers, iOS, Windows Phone and Androidsmartphones and tablets, as well as
the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One home consoles. Music can be browsed through
or searched for by parameters such as artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label. Users can
create, edit, and share playlists and tracks on social media, and make playlists with other users.
Spotify provides access to more than 40 million songs. As of November 2018, it had 191 million
monthly active users, including 87 million paying subscribers.[8]
Spotify’s humble beginnings started in 2008, when Ek and Martin Lorentzon; Two Swedish
entrepreneurs launched Spotify with the idea of creating a legal platform to distribute music
online when illegal file sharing sites (such as limewire, piratebay, etc) reigned supreme over
the music market. During this time as well, websites like Myspace and Napster, that were
used by many musicians to promote their music – Owl City, Panic! At the Disco, Sean
Kingston, were better known and trusted by the public, making it harder for Spotify to enter
market during the time.
Initially, Spotify limited the sign-up process for free services by invitation only, and paid-for
subscription were readily available. However, Spotify reported a $4.4 million loss in 2008.

Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and
although the company's head office is now in London, much of its research and
development remains in Stockholm.

The streaming service launched on October 7, 2008 and the company initially limited
the sign-up for free services by making it invite-only. Paid-for subscriptions were
made available immediately but despite this, Spotify reported a $4.4 million loss in
2008.

The option of signing up for a free account wasn't made generally available to the
public in the UK until 2009. That's also when Spotify launched on the Apple App
Store and continued to grow as it provided an alternative to both legal and illegal
downloading of music.

In 2011, the company received a $100 million investment that it used to fund its
launch into the United States. Sean Parker, the co-founder of infamous file-sharing
 site Napster was brought on board to secure relationships with the major record
labels.

By 2012, the company had launched its service on Android smartphones.

Unlike physical or download sales, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify
pays royalties based on the number of artists' streams as a proportion of total songs streamed. It
distributes approximately 70% of 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 argued that it does not fairly compensate musicians.
In April 2017, as part of its efforts to renegotiate license deals for an interest in going
public, Spotify announced that artists will be able to make albums temporarily exclusive to the
Premium service if they are part of Universal Music Group or Merlin Network.
On 28 February 2018, Spotify filed for a direct listing on the New York Stock
Exchange.[9] Spotify's shares began trading on 3 April 2018.[10]
Launched in Sweden in 2008, Spotify is a service that lets you stream music from a
library that is so extensive that it would take 80 years of non-stop listening just to get
through it.

As well as letting people listen to anything from golden oldies to the latest hits on
their computer, Spotify also has a number of smartphone apps to allow for music on
the move. There are also Spotify apps on other services, such Virgin Media’s TiVo
set-top box or Sonos speakers, and deep-integration with Facebook to make music
more social.

Features and benefits of Spotify

 Listen to music for free.

 Can be used on almost any computer.
 Playlists can be created and shared to save your favourite music.
 Share what you are listening to with your Facebook friends.
 Apps from companies like The Guardian newspaper and Rolling Stone magazine
that help you discover new music.

Disadvantages of Spotify's free version

 Regular advertisements interrupt your listening experience.

 Music can only be played on your computer, not on any other device.
 You’re allowed to listen to a particular track only five times.
 You’re limited to 10 hours of play per month.
 New users must have a Facebook account to sign up.

Premium 'paid for' Spotify

 You can use Spotify as an app ‘on the go’ on iPhones and Android, Symbian,
Windows phones and BlackBerry.
 In May 2012, an app was released for the iPad.
 New users must have a Facebook account to sign up.
 Combine your Spotify playlists with music you already own.
 Offline mode to play music if you’re not connected to the internet.
 Take your music abroad.
 Higher sound quality.

Eleven years after it was founded, Spotify finally goes public on April 3. As the company's CEO and
co-founder Daniel Ek explained on his blog a day earlier, Spotify seeks to put itself "on a bigger
stage" by listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Spotify is not raising capital, and our shareholders and employees have been free to buy and sell
our stock for years...The move doesn't change who we are, what we are about, or how we operate,"
he wrote in the blog post.

Read more: Spotify: Market unicorn prepares to go public

Analysts expect Spotify's first day on the NYSE to be volatile due to uncertainty as to whether the
company — which has lost more than 2.4 billion euros ($3 billion) since it started — will be the next
corporate chart-topper.

"One of the big questions about Spotify is whether they can take it to the next level like Netflix has,"
said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager for Synovus Trust. He says the video streaming service
has created a hugely successful subscription-driven franchise with "spectacular returns for the
company's investors."

Music industry disrupter

Daniel Ek (Getty Images/AFP/T. Yamanaka)

Daniel Ek, one of Spotify's co-founders

Spotify's popularity marked the music industry's shift from physical to digital, to embracing the
internet rather than fighting it, with the platform has helped to spread the medium of streaming
services in many parts of the world.

Spotify says it currently has 159 million monthly users, including 71 million paying subscribers. Its
value is estimated to be as much as 19 billion euros ($23.4 billion).
Nonetheless, many competitors have since emerged, includingApple Music, Amazon or the local
players such as Deezer or Saavn, which focuses on Hindi Music. They all aim to win a slice of the
music streaming market, which grew by 60.4 percent in 2016 according to the annual report by the
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). That year, Spotify controlled 44 percent
of the overall subscriber share.

€32,500 for 10 million streams

But while Spotify is undoubtedly the driving force of a turnaround in the music industry, the service
has not posted a profit since it launched.

The company with full-year revenue of more than 4 billion euros ($4.95 billion) in 2017 said it aimed
to boost its subscriber numbers from 30 to 36 percent this year.

Taylor Swift (picture-alliance/J.Salangsang)

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift pulled out all her music from Spotify over fees, saying that
"Music shouldn't be free."

Revenue is one of Spotify's key problems: The service has repeatedly come under fire for obscuring
how much it actually pays to artists, which has caused the public question whether the service is fair.

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Perrin Lamb said in 2015 that he received $40,000 (€32,500) in
royalties for 10 million streams of his single "Everyone’s Got Something," making the average per-
stream payout around €0,0032.

In 2016, Forbes magazine quoted a report showing that there is no set fee for downloads, and that
per play revenue allocation is highly variable, meaning a reliable "average" is almost impossible to
ascertain.

Same old song

Spotify has not only changed the way artists are paid for their music — but also how they create it.
With Spotify's focus on playlists, it has become much easier to find new music; but it has also made
traditional albums almost irrelevant.

Read more: Spotify hit with $1.6 billion copyright lawsuit

Writing in The Guardian last year, music business and technology journalist Eamonn Forde said that
recording companies tend to create single multi-format songs to "keep the plates spinning" in the
Spotify age. The goal is to get more revenue from one composition, he noted, with Spotify's number
one ranked song in 2017, "Despacito," having billions of hits due to the many different versions and
remixes that have been released.

Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee (picture alliance/AP Photo/L.Sladky)

'UN-ISLAMIC' DESPACITO SILENCED BY MALAYSIAN CENSORS

Striking the wrong note

Denouncing the lyrics of hit Spanish-language single by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, Islamic party
Amanah, argued that "many young children were singing the song without understanding the
words." Spanish is not commonly used in Malaysia, where English, Malay, and several Chinese and
Indian dialects are spoken.

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The future of music?

"Spotify's model of letting people stream songs on demand is proving more popular than paid
downloads, curated playlists, or internet radio broadcasting," said eMarketer principal analyst Paul
Verna. "Spotify is a 'cool' brand, and teenagers especially love it. This bodes well for continued brand
loyalty, which is a big factor in the stickiness of music services," he added.

However, Spotify's stock exchange debut may have been poorly timed as tech stocks are being
dragged down by worries about privacy and Facebook's handling of private data. "Spotify will be
lumped in with other tech stocks, which have been battered lately because of Facebook's data
privacy issues," Verna said.

Read more: Facebook to change privacy controls amid data scandal outcry

The concern is justified since Facebook has been credited with playing into Spotify's success: In 2009,
Spotify won the public backing of Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg, who posted:
"Spotify is so good."

Meanwhile, the Recording Industry Association of America said that revenue grew 16.5 percent in
2017, which marks the biggest increase since the dawn of online music in 1999.