Usually, through an IPO, a company sells new shares to raise additional capital. What does this mean in practice? It means that the company did not enlist an investment bank to sound out the market, secure the interest of institutional and retail investors, and support the price and the trading of the shares after the floatation. First of all, the company used a new and alternative strategy to make its shares available for public trading: a direct listing, rather than a more traditional underwritten IPO. Spotify made waves when it went public with a direct listing in 2018. SoundCloud? Beyond surface similarities, the two businesses are actually quite different. We look at two of the companies that have been more innovative in the sector, and what has made them successful (or return to being successful, in the case of SoundCloud).

Lessons from the music business can be applied to many other sectors that are feeling the impact of technology and changing consumer behaviors.

File streaming has been nothing short of a revolution. Technology has changed every facet of the industry: from the way the audio is stored and played, the way consumers acquire it, all the way to how artists can market and distribute it.

Not many industries have undergone the same level of transformation as the music industry.

Who owns spotify 2017