Spotify continued its remarkable run this week, briefly surpassing the $100 billion market cap before retreating slightly by the close of trading on Friday (December 6). The company's shares rose 4.5% to $498.63, marking the music streamer's second-best closing price ever. The best closing price of $502.38 came on Wednesday (Dec 4), when Spotify hit a new intraday high of $506.47, valuing the Swedish company at around $100.8 billion.
The $100 billion mark was reached on the same day Spotify launched 2024 Wrapped, its personalized data-driven product that analyzes listeners' streaming time and ranks their most popular artists and tracks. First released in 2015, Wrapped has become both a major media event and a wildly successful product that listeners share endlessly on social media.
At Friday's closing price, Spotify has gained 165.4% in 2024, making it the only music company with a triple-digit gain. This improvement is three times higher than that of Live Nation, which has grown 46.1% this year. Cloud Music is close behind, up 44.2% year-to-date.
With a valuation more than double that of the next biggest music company, Spotify is a major driver of the 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index, which rose 2.8% to an all-time high of 2,280.51. This brings the annual gain to 48.7%. Ten of the 20 stocks were gainers while nine lost ground and one was unchanged. Radio companies, boosted by iHeartMedia's 14% gain, led the way with an average gain of 5.9%. Streaming companies saw an average increase of 4.4%. Live music companies were essentially equal. Multi-format companies (record labels, music publishers) fell 2.1% on average.
Most other streaming companies won this week. Tencent Music Entertainment rose 10% to $11.54. Cloud Music rose 9.7% to HKD 129.40 ($16.63). LiveOne jumped 6% to $0.88. Deezer improved 2.9% to 1.37 euros ($1.45). Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 6.8% to $0.73.
In real time, MSG Entertainment improved 1.6% to $36.26 this week. The company announced on Tuesday (December 3) that it spent $25 million to buy back its Class A common shares because they were priced “relative to the company's long-term growth potential.” Elsewhere, Live Nation fell 1.1 percent to $140.26, while Sphere Entertainment Co., which announced additional Dead & Company dates this week, fell 5.1 percent to $40.27.
In other notable stock moves this week, HYBE fell 3.2% to 214,000 won ($150.15) on news that South Korean authorities are investigating the president Bang Si-hyuk for possible violations of the country's capital markets law. The move came after a report claimed Bang had a secret deal with shareholders ahead of HYBE's initial public offering that netted him $285 million in profits when the company went public in 2020. HYBE shares fell 6 .7% in the two days of trading after the news report but recovered more than half its losses later in the week. Other K-pop stocks fell in agreement with HYBE. JYP Entertainment fell 5.2%, YG Entertainment lost 5.8% and SM Entertainment sank 7.5%.
Elsewhere, stocks were mostly up globally. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 3.3% and the S&P 500 gained 1%. In the UK, the FTSE 100 improved 0.3%. China's Shanghai Composite rose 2.4%. Dragged by political turmoil, South Korea's KOSPI composite index fell 1.1 percent.
