Report: Spotify in ‘advanced’ talks to buy SoundCloud

According to sources cited by Financial Times, SoundCloud, the beloved independent darling of the music world, is in acquisition talks with Spotify.

This month, Spotify hit a huge milestone of 40 million paying customers, a rather large jump from next-best Apple, with its 17 million users. SoundCloud, while mostly known for making independent music more accessible, recently reached a milestone of its own: the launch of its paid music streaming service.

With 100 million global users, Spotify is the clear-cut market leader in online streaming. As competition continues to heat up with Apple Music though, the acquisition could tip the scales in Spotify’s favor if it’s somehow able to bake the independent appeal of SoundCloud into its primary platform.

Of course, we have no confirmation that Spotify is even purchasing SoundCloud, so it’s probably too early to speculate what it would do with the company once it does acquire it.

The news is music to the ears of Jack Dorsey, as Twitter owns a stake in SoundCloud after a $70 million dollar investment earlier this year. That investment came two years after a Dorsey-less Twitter had thoughts to purchase the platform outright, but ended up walking away without pulling the trigger.