Your move Apple Music: Spotify completes new funding round

Spotify just closed its latest financing round, a day after Apple launched Apple Music.

TeliaSonera, a Swedish mobile network operator company, had bought a stake in Spotify. The compnay has announced that it it is investing US$115-million for a 1.4% stake. This round values Spotify at around US$8.2-billion.

“We’ve set-out to create a New Generation Telco where innovation is key to our success. Spotify is a great company, loved by customers and with a world class take on innovation I’m excited to join Spotify’s journey as investor and key partner”, says Johan Dennelind, President and CEO, TeliaSonera.

Read more: Apple Music: the right move, or a pricey dead end?

The two companies, Spotify and TeliaSonera, are also committing resources, staff and other assets to ignite the joint innovation agenda focusing on area such as media distribution, customer insights, data analytics and advertising.

This is not the first time that two companies, TeliaSonera and Spotify, have done business together. They have been in a partnership for the last five years.

There relationship between them is that Spotify Chairman of the Board, Martin Lorentzon, is a member of TeliaSonera’s Board of Directors. TeliaSonera is however to quick to point out that Lorentzon “has not participated in the board’s discussions or in the decision leading up to the partnership”. The deal, it says, was the work of TeliaSonera board and management’s dialogue and discussions with Spotify’s executive management.

Telia Sonera was also Spotify’s first carrier to partner on Spotify’s bundled music offerings and its broadband and mobile subscriptions.

“We have a long and great relationship with TeliaSonera and I’m pleased we’re able to take this to the next level together with this strategic partnership”, said Daniel Ek, CEO and Founder, Spotify.

Spotify is currently one of the world’s biggest streaming music services, with 15 million paid users and 60 million users overall across its global footprint. The competition is increasing and this has forced the company to be innovative.