Spotify sees itself as something more than a music streaming platform. Investors have long gotten there.
The company unveiled an ambitious vision Monday during a two-hour webcast, revealing new and upcoming offerings for audiences, musicians, podcasters and advertisers. These include a high-end music streaming service for recorders, more tools for musicians and podcasters to expand their revenue streams and a major international expansion that will bring the service to 85 new markets this year. For a podcast – which has been particularly interesting to investors – Spotify has added a new series of eight programs with former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen.
Dumping news, in other words. And one that pleased investors at first, put Spotify’s stock price up 5% before broad-based tech sales sold the shares back down to the red before the end of trading on Monday. Spotify is still up more than 11% since the beginning of the year and around 138% over the past 12 months, significantly better than other hot streaming names like Netflix and Disney. Shares of Warner Music Group, one of the world’s largest record labels controlling some of the most popular music that Spotify writers listen to, has lost about 4% to so far this year.
Opportunities outside of music streaming are a major attraction for Spotify investors right now. The stock’s huge surge over the past year has come largely from hype over new podcast deals, with the likes of Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian and DC Comics. Even the royal family gets into the action; Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appeared at an event Monday to unveil their own special Spotify podcast, coming later this year.
But while the number of podcasts on Spotify tripled last year to 2.2 million, the company has yet to break down any financial information about the campaign. The popular “Joe Rogan Experience” came to Spotify on December 1, but the company only said on its fourth quarter on February 4 that the program “contributed significantly to the growth of users on the platform . ” In a note following the results, Brian Russo of Credit Suisse said the company’s outlook for this year “does little to suggest that this content drives inclusion in the industry. ”