Spotify continued to perform well this week, briefly surpassing $100 billion in market capitalization, but fell slightly at the close on Friday (December 6). The company’s shares rose 4.5% to $498.63, marking the music streamer’s second-highest closing price ever. Spotify hit an intraday high of $506.47 on Wednesday (December 4) and hit a best closing price of $502.38. The Swedish company is valued at approximately $100.8 billion.
The $100 billion threshold comes on the same day Spotify launches 2024 Wrapped, a personalized, data-driven product that breaks down listeners’ streaming time and ranks their most popular artists and tracks. Wrapped first launched in 2015 and has become a major media campaign and a hugely successful product that listeners continue to share on social media.
Based on Friday’s closing price, Spotify’s stock price rose 165.4% in 2024, becoming the only music company to achieve a triple-digit increase. That gain is three times that of Live Nation, which is up 46.1% this year. Cloud Music follows closely behind, growing 44.2% so far this year.
Spotify, valued at more than double the second-largest music company, was the main driver of the 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index, which rose 2.8% to a record high of 2,280.51 points. This brings its year-to-date gain to 48.7%. Of the 20 stocks, 10 were up, 9 were down, and 1 was flat. Broadcasters led the way with an average gain of 5.9%, driven by iHeartMedia’s 14% gain. Streaming media companies gained an average of 4.4%. Live music companies were essentially flat. Companies in various industries (record labels, music publishers) fell an average of 2.1%.
Most other streaming companies are up this week. Tencent Music Entertainment rose 10% to $11.54. Cloud Music rose 9.7% to HK$129.40 (US$16.63). LiveOne rose 6% to $0.88. Deezer rose 2.9% to 1.37 euros ($1.45). Shares in Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 6.8% to $0.73.
On the live streaming side, MSG Entertainment gained 1.6% this week to $36.26. The company announced on Tuesday (December 3) that it would spend $25 million to repurchase Class A common stock because its price was “relative to the company’s long-term growth potential.” Elsewhere, Live Nation fell 1.1% to $140.26, while Sphere Entertainment Co. dropped 5.1% to $40.27 this week after it announced additional Dead & Company show dates.
In other noteworthy stock moves this week, HYBE fell 3.2% to 214,000 won ($150.15) following news that South Korean authorities were investigating the chairman. Bang Shi Hyuk may violate the country’s Capital Markets Law. It was previously reported that Bang reached a secret deal with shareholders ahead of HYBE’s initial public offering that netted him a $285 million profit when the company went public in 2020. Shares fell 6.7% but recovered more than half of their losses later in the week. Other K-pop stocks fell in tandem with HYBE. JYP Entertainment fell 5.2%, YG Entertainment fell 5.8%, and SM Entertainment fell 7.5%.
Elsewhere, global stocks were mostly higher. The U.S. Nasdaq rose 3.3% and the S&P 500 rose 1%. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.3%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.4%. Dragged down by political turmoil, South Korea’s Composite Stock Price Index fell 1.1%.
