NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Shares of music streaming service Spotify have become a hot commodity for investors, with the company’s share price more than doubling since late March.
As of Wednesday, shares of Spotify were trading at more than $243, giving the streamer a market cap of more than $45 billion dollars, up from just over $117 on March 17th.
Currently Spotify’s market cap has more than tripled Warner Music Group’s current valuation of $16.37B and even ahead of the reported $43 billion that UMG is said to be worth.
Investor interest in Spotify, comes as the company seeks to diversify its content to limit its reliance on major its major label partners.
In May, Spotify affirmed its commitment to expanding its podcast offerings when they lured comedian Joe Rogan to bring his popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience to the platform from rival YouTube in a deal worth a reported $100 million.
As well, Spotify has begun deploying video to the platform and has begun experimenting with interactive advertisements that allow podcast listeners to activate promo codes mentioned in podcasts within the Spotify app.
“The average podcast listener has heard a countless number of ads ending with promo codes or show-specific websites, carefully repeated three times so as not to forget it,” Joel Withrow, senior product manager of Podcast Monetisation at Spotify, said in a statement.
“In-app offers makes it vastly simpler for listeners to redeem deals whenever they come back to the app, and we can all benefit from one fewer ‘w-w-w-dot’ spelling lesson from our favourite podcast creators.”
