Spotify went public without selling a single new share. Most companies hire banks to price an offering and hand stock to big investors. Spotify simply let its existing shares start trading on the New York Stock Exchange, a direct listing. The Swedish streaming service filed in February 2018, when music piracy had faded and paying a monthly fee for every song had become normal. Spotify had done much to make it so.

A Better Deal Than Piracy

Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in Stockholm in 2006. File-sharing sites had gutted music sales. Their bet was that a free, legal service that played songs instantly could beat piracy, and that some listeners would pay to drop the ads. Spotify signed licenses with the major record labels. Those royalty deals became its largest cost, and its subscribers became its main source of revenue.

$132, Then $165.90

The NYSE set a reference price of $132 a share the night before trading began on April 3, 2018. Spotify opened at $165.90 under the ticker SPOT and closed at $149.01. The direct listing raised no money for the company, and it became a model that Slack and others later followed. Spotify added podcasts and audiobooks, and it still trades on the NYSE as SPOT.

Cover: The Hurdy-Gurdy Player, Cornelis Visscher. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a street musician cranking a hurdy-gurdy (music on demand).