Swedish music-streaming service provider Spotify in advanced talks to buy SoundCloud
29 Sep 2016
Swedish music-streaming service provider Spotify is in advanced talks to buy its German rival SoundCloud, the Financial Times yesterday reported, citing people briefed on the discussions.
Bloomberg had reported in July that SoundCloud's founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss and investors were exploring strategic options, including a sale, that could value the Berlin-based company at $1 billion.
FT said that SoundCloud, which raised $100 million in June from a group of investors including Twitter, was last valued at about $700 million.
In May, media had reported that Twitter, which had invested $70 million, was considering buying SoundCloud for around $2 billion.
SoundCloud is the world's leading social sound platform that can be accessed and shared using an iPhone and Android apps, as well as hundreds of creation and sharing apps built on the SoundCloud platform.
SoundCloud app allows a user to record and upload sounds and share them privately with their friends or publicly on blogs, sites and social networks like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Foursquare.
It has more than 175 million unique monthly listeners, while content creators upload about 12 hours worth of audio every minute.
But the company, which has a paid SoundCloud Go service and has not taken off, has yet to make a profit. In 2014, SoundCloud reported a turnover of €17.4 million and an operating loss of €39 million.
Spotify is a music, podcast, and video streaming service that provides digital rights management–protected content from record labels and media companies.
The service is available in most of the Americas, Europe, and some countries in Asia and Oceania.
Spotify is said to have 100 million active users worldwide and 40 million subscribers.
