Spotify allegedly filed for its IPO in December, and will go directly to the New York Stock Exchange while bypassing many of the IPO conventions.
According to a report by Axios, the music streaming service filed confidentially at the end of December. CNBC reports it will skip the share sale and be listed directly on the NYSE at the end of Q1 2018. This will mean the shares have no predetermined price.
Rumors about the filing have been cropping up intermittently for quite some time. We reported on the rumors as far back as last May. At the time, it was thought that Spotify might save tens of millions of dollars in fees by listing directly.
While the filing has probably been planned for some time, the timing of it feels unfortunate given the company was just served with a $1.6 billion lawsuit for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed by Wixen Music Publishing, alleges the service uses thousands of songs it hasn’t licensed.
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Spotify declined to comment when approached about the report.
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