How will Spotify going public affect you? There could be some changes coming

It’s official: We can now buy stock for our favorite music-streaming service, Spotify. The popular service became a publicly owned company today, April 3rd, meaning that, for the first time ever, it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. But will the company change now that it’s gone public?

In a slightly unusual move, Spotify went public via a method called direct listing. This means that, unlike when a company lists itself with an initial public offering (IPO), there are no banks acting as intermediaries to arrange stock prices. Stock quotes for the music-streaming service are currently about $132, and the company overall is valued at roughly $23.5 billion. It is trading under the name SPOT.

CEO Daniel Ek wrote in an April 2nd post that Spotify will stay true to its roots despite going public.

"Spotify is not raising capital, and our shareholders and employees have been free to buy and sell our stock for years," Ek wrote on the company blog. "So while tomorrow puts us on a bigger stage, it doesn’t change who we are, what we are about, or how we operate."

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However, some changes are likely if Spotify wants to stand out from the crowd. Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, told USA Today that, while tweaks to pricing are unlikely in the short term, the service’s “heightened focus on growth and profit” could mean changes like limiting free trials.

Additionally, for most of its life, Spotify has focused solely on music. But on March 30th, Taylor Swift released her second “Delicate” music video, which premiered exclusively on the streaming service. This could be a sign of new steps the company will take, although we won’t know for sure until more music videos premiere on the app.

Going public is a huge step for Spotify, and it’s hard to say exactly how or if the service will change in the coming months. But in the meantime, we’ll continue to use Spotify to listen to our favorite playlists.