Streaming giant Spotify sets April 3 date for sharemarket float

Spotify will make its Wall Street debut next month. Picture / Getty Images

Spotify will make its Wall Street debut at the beginning of next month, the music streaming giant announced today, as it laid out its case to investors ahead of the most hotly anticipated technology flotation of the year.

The Swedish company will go public on April 3, its head of investor relations Paul Vogel said. It is expected to be valued at more than US$20 billion ($27.6b), the biggest valuation generated by a European consumer technology company on its flotation.

Spotify is pursuing an unconventional listing in which it is not raising any money or binding its employees to the standard "lock-up" periods that bar them from selling shares during the early weeks.

Its low-key listing forgoes the traditional investor roadshow or the cadre of bankers tasked with generating demand for a share offering, but it has raised concerns that the company could see an unusually-volatile first day of trading without the restrictions that public companies typically apply to share sales.

In a one-off presentation streamed over the internet, Spotify's chief executive Daniel Ek attempted to downplay the significance of the flotation.

"For us, going public has never been about the pomp or circumstance of it all," he said.

"You won't see us ringing any bells or throwing any parties. The traditional model for taking a company public isn't a very good fit for us."

Spotify dedicated much of the presentation attempting to distinguish itself from Apple and Amazon's rival streaming operations, which are investing heavily to cut the Swedish company's lead.

It claimed that it was able to exploit a wide lead in data on its users' listening habits to recommend new music to subscribers better than its rivals.

"We're not focused on selling hardware, we're not focused on selling books," Ek said.

Major record labels are among the biggest independent shareholders in the company.