Popular music streaming service Spotify is continuing its growth plan and is now seeking additional funding in order to do so. The company is looking for new investors at a $5.27 billion valuation, a report from Swedish based financial publication Dagens Industri said.
The report goes on to say the investment will likely come in the form of a loan, as Spotify's founders aren't looking to give up anymore of the company. The $5.27 billion valuation is up significantly from the company's estimated value of $3 billion last November.
The service has around 6 million paid subscribers and tens of millions of ad-funded free users. Currently servicing 28 different countries through mobile and desktop devices, some have suggested bringing in additional funding now would be an integral part of the service's growth.
With most people likely to only choose one paid music streaming subscription at a time, competition like Pandora, and with what appears to be a steady stream of new functionality development costs, the Stockholm-based company is going to need additional funding to get an edge.
It has recently been introducing some new features and functionality including Spotify Connect that allows for premium subscribers to stream Spotify content to their Wi-Fi compatible speaker systems, among other things. The company also introduced curated playlists through the new "Browse" functionality last month. This feature brings specialty playlists from Spotify music experts and other users.
With each new initiative the company takes on, it needs money, and so far it has raised $288 million.
It is not only development costs and overall expansion the company is need of funding for though, the high cost of content royalty fees is always a concern for these kinds of music streaming services. Not to mention a steady stream of legal battles, just recently the company got into trouble with the Ministry of Sound over copyright infringement on playlists.