What could Spotify do with $1 billion? That’s now a question worth asking, since it’s managed to raise the sum as debt financing to spend on growing the company.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the music streaming business has secured the money—as debt rather than equity—with some pretty serious caveats associated with Spotify’s plans to go through with an IPO. You can read more about the finer details of the deal at the Journal.
What it does provide the company—which has never made a profit—with, though, is an extra billion dollars to spend on itself. So perhaps more interesting for most of us is: What can it do with all that money?
There’s already some speculation about what it might be used for. TechCrunch claims it will be spent on “growth and marketing”; Recode wonders if it might “buy rival services, like Pandora or SoundCloud” or be “going shopping for video.”
Whatever its plans, it’s clear that it’s readying itself for a fight against Apple Music—which has far fewer money concerns than the plucky green streamer. We’ll have to see how it thinks $1 billion will be best spent in the scrap.