Who Owns Spotify?

Spotify has no single owner, but its two founders control it. Spotify Technology S.A. is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, yet Martin Lorentzon and Daniel Ek together hold around 70% of the voting power while owning roughly a quarter of the company economically. The gap is created by a Luxembourg instrument called beneficiary certificates. The UK register records only that Spotify Limited answers to a Luxembourg parent. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Spotify?

The British company is SPOTIFY LIMITED (06436047), incorporated 23 November 2007. Its person with significant control is Spotify Technology S.A., registered in Luxembourg as B123052, holding 75% or more since 3 April 2018 — the month Spotify went public.

That single entry is all Companies House holds. Spotify Technology S.A. is a Luxembourg company listed in New York, so neither its shareholders nor its founders’ holdings are disclosed through any UK filing.

The company is Swedish in origin and identity, and Swedish in its main operations, but its parent has been Luxembourg-registered since well before the listing — a detail that surprises people who assume the answer is Stockholm.

Parent company and ownership structure

Spotify Technology S.A. is the ultimate parent, with the UK, Swedish and US businesses beneath it. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2018 through a direct listing — existing shares were simply admitted to trading, with no new shares issued and no bank underwriting the offer. Spotify was the first major company to go public that way.

Its structure separates money from votes. Ordinary shares carry one vote each. Alongside them sit beneficiary certificates, an instrument available under Luxembourg company law, which carry votes but no economic rights — held by the founders at a ratio that multiplies their voting power roughly tenfold relative to their shareholding.

The practical effect: buying Spotify stock buys the economics of the business and almost none of the control.

Major shareholders or controlling interests

On the most recent figures the company has reported, Martin Lorentzon holds about 41.6% of the voting power on roughly 9.8% of the economics, and Daniel Ek about 29.1% of the votes on roughly 14.3% of the economics — together around 70.7% of the vote.

Lorentzon, the less publicly visible of the two, therefore has more voting power than Ek. That inverts the common assumption that Ek, as the founder-figure and long-time chief executive, must be the controlling shareholder.

The remaining shares are widely held by institutions, with index managers such as Vanguard and BlackRock among the largest — holding, as elsewhere on this site, on behalf of the investors in their funds. Tencent has held a significant minority stake since a 2017 share swap, and the major record companies received small holdings in Spotify’s early years.

These percentages come from disclosure dates and drift. Any figure without a date attached is of little use.

Other media assets in the group

Spotify owns the podcast businesses it bought during its expansion — Gimlet Media, Parcast, Megaphone and The Ringer — and the audiobook platform Findaway. Anchor, the podcast creation tool, was folded into Spotify for Podcasters.

It does not own the music. Recordings are licensed from Universal, Sony and Warner and from independent distributors, which is the central fact of Spotify’s economics: the largest music service in the world owns almost none of the catalogue it streams, and the labels that license to it have also been shareholders in it.

Ownership history

Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon and funded privately for twelve years, taking investment from venture funds, the record labels and, in 2017, Tencent.

The April 2018 direct listing changed who could buy shares without changing who controlled the company — the founders’ voting structure was in place before it and survived it intact.

Daniel Ek stepped down as chief executive on 1 January 2026, becoming executive chairman, with Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström appointed co-chief executives. That was a change of management, not of ownership: his voting control was unaffected. The distinction between running a company and controlling it is the one this site returns to most often, and Spotify is now a clean example of it.

The UK company’s own filings show the early confusion. Spotify Limited filed two PSC statements in 2016 — one saying it had not completed the steps to identify a registrable person, another saying none existed — and withdrew both, replacing them with the Luxembourg parent in April 2018.

Sources and verification

The Spotify Limited PSC entry, the Luxembourg parent’s registration number and the two withdrawn 2016 statements are from the Companies House register.

Everything about the voting structure is not. The 41.6% and 29.1% voting figures, the economic percentages and the beneficiary certificate mechanism come from Spotify’s own filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is where a Luxembourg company listed in New York discloses. They are authoritative but dated, and they change as holdings change. Companies House does not verify most filed information.