Spotify listed on the NYSE on 3 April 2018.

Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon founded Spotify in 2006, and still hold an 80.4% majority stake in the company. Ek is the current CEO and controls 37.3% of the voting power, with Lorentzon sitting on the board and controlling 43.1%.

Their combined stake in Spotify’s tradable stock though, is 21.45% - using Spotify’s estimated valuation of $19.9 billion from late 2017, Ek and Lortentzon’s combined stock has a value of around $4.08 billion.

Other major shareholders include Tencent (2.4%) and hedge fund Tiger Global (2.2%).

Spotify has two revenue streams: the monthly fee paid by its premium subscribers, and the fees that advertisers pay to appear on its non-premium services.

The company has announced that it has 71 million premium subscribers out of 159 million total monthly active users. Those 71 million premium subscribers make up the vast majority of revenue: just 10% of the money Spotify made in 2017 came from advertising.

One thing to note about Spotify is that for the moment it doesn’t actually make any profit – in 2017, its operating loss was €378 million. Much of that is down to the royalties it pays for its music, with almost 80% of the money coming in going straight out again.

A tech IPO that makes a loss isn’t particularly unusual, with Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat all arriving on the markets before they turned a profit. But Spotify’s road to profitability could be a key consideration in its early days on the markets.

You can trade Spotify with an IC Markets CFD trading account (with link), which enables you to speculate on price movements in either direction without needing to buy or sell the underlying shares. The profit or loss you make is dependent on the extent to which you can get your predictions right.