Spotify: One of the handful of monthly subscriptions I don't mind dishing out a few bucks for. While most on-demand video-streaming services rely on new content to draw viewership, the consumption of music on the Spotify platform relies on its back catalog, hence its significant marginal costs - the royalties it pays the music industry.
The music-streaming company filed to go public last week. With competition like Amazon Music and Apple that have an overwhelming amount of financial backing, in addition to the cost of revenue that Spotify has to pay to record labels, it's going to be interesting how Spotify navigates the music-streaming seas. At the same time, there's potential to leverage the data acquired from their platform (I recently saw a tweet that mentioned that Metallica was adjusting their concert playlist in particular cities based on local Spotify listening data) and for the company to launch its own record label. Whatever the case, Spotify's expected to make a big splash when its shares begin trading.
In light of the upcoming IPO, I thought it was worthwhile to share a bit about the business.