It is perhaps the sign of the times that whenever we think of startups – however big or hot they might be – we think of them getting bought by another cash rich company. We don’t think of them as freestanding, long-term businesses. A few weeks ago it was Groupon being acquired by Yahoo and last night there were rumors that Apple might be kicking the tires on Spotify.
And if that wasn’t enough, Michael Arrington is reporting that Spotify almost sold to Google for about $ 1 billion last year. It was around the time Apple acquired the streaming service, Lala. So what does Spotify have to say about all this? Jim Butcher, communications director at the company in an email wrote:
We wouldn’t normally comment on this kind of speculation, but we wanted to make it clear that we have absolutely no intention of selling Spotify. We’re working hard to build the best music service we can and are in this for the long haul.
Spotify has raised over $ 50 million in funding and is rumored to be profitable based on its European operations alone. The company has struggled to find a toehold in the all-important U.S. market. Anyway when I think of acquirers for Spotify – and there are many who would want to buy this company — Amazon and Nokia are better suitors than say Apple or Google. Of course, there are several other music startups which might be available for sale too – Rdio and MOG are two that come to mind.
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