Who Owns Spotify? Ek and Lorentzon Cast 69.3% of the Votes on 23% of Shares

Spotify's ownership at a glance

Spotify Technology S.A. is incorporated in Luxembourg and listed on the NYSE. The company went public on 3 April 2018 via a direct listing — bypassing the traditional IPO process and the associated underwriting fees. The NYSE published a reference price of $132.00 per share before trading opened; the shares actually opened at $165.90. corpgov.law.harvard.edu

These are the only three holders Spotify identifies as owning more than 5% of its ordinary shares. The figures are taken from Item 7.A of Spotify's Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025 and are stated as of that date, against 205,832,527 ordinary shares and 309,932,980 beneficiary certificates outstanding. The rows overlap by design: every one of Tencent's 16,631,969 shares also sits inside Ek's 28,625,267, because he holds an irrevocable proxy over them. Strip those out and Ek's own vehicle holds just 11,993,298 shares. Well-known institutional names that appear on third-party shareholder trackers — Baillie Gifford, T. Rowe Price and the rest — sit below Spotify's 5% disclosure threshold and are not named in the filing. sec.gov

The share structure that keeps the founders in charge

Spotify does not run a conventional dual-class structure. It has a single class of ordinary shares, one vote each, plus a second instrument called a beneficiary certificate. Beneficiary certificates carry no economic rights at all — no dividend, no claim on assets — but each one carries a vote. Spotify has issued ten of them for every ordinary share held of record by entities the founders own, for 309,932,980 certificates outstanding at the end of 2025. They cannot be transferred, and they are cancelled automatically if the ordinary share they are attached to is sold. sec.gov

The effect is that Martin Lorentzon owns 9.3% of the ordinary shares but controls 40.5% of the votes, and Daniel Ek owns 13.9% but controls 28.8% — 69.3% of Spotify's total voting power between them, as disclosed in the 2025 annual report. Lorentzon is therefore the single largest voting bloc, while Ek holds the CEO role and directs day-to-day operations. Neither founder can be removed by institutional shareholders without the other's cooperation.

Ek and Lorentzon are named on 23% of Spotify's shares and cast 69.3% of its votes.

Tencent's stake and the music industry crossover

Tencent Holdings held 16,631,969 Spotify ordinary shares — 8.1% of the total — at the end of 2025, spread across TME Hong Kong, Image Frame, Tencent Mobility and Distribution Pool. Critically, Spotify's filing discloses that Ek exercises voting power over all of those shares through an irrevocable proxy held by his investment vehicle D.G.E. Investments. Tencent has the economics; Ek has the votes. sec.gov

The stake originated in a cross-investment announced on 8 December 2017, in which Spotify took a minority stake in Tencent Music Entertainment while Tencent and TME took minority stakes in Spotify. Tencent's Chinese music streaming services include QQ Music, KuGou and Kuwo. tencent.com

The cross-holding means Tencent benefits from Spotify's global growth while Spotify gains a financial and strategic relationship with the dominant music platform in the world's largest streaming market. The arrangement has occasionally raised regulatory questions but has not been challenged by US or EU authorities to date.

Those operating figures come from the same annual report: 751 million monthly active users, 290 million Premium subscribers and total revenue of €17,186 million for 2025, up from €15,673 million in 2024. sec.gov

The major labels: not owners, but powerful partners

Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group do not own equity in Spotify today. They did hold shares while Spotify was private, and they sold around the 2018 direct listing. Warner Music Group's own annual report for the year to September 2018 books a gain on its Spotify share sale of $382 million net of estimated artist share and related costs, or $317 million after tax — the clearest public accounting of a major label cashing out. sec.gov

The labels are now Spotify's content suppliers and, indirectly, competitive checks: if licensing costs rise, Spotify's margins compress. The scale of that dependence is visible in the accounts. Spotify's Premium cost of revenue — overwhelmingly music royalties, plus payment processing and streaming delivery — equalled 66% of Premium revenue in 2025, down from 67% in 2024. Spotify's push into podcasts and audiobooks is in part a strategy to reduce dependence on label-controlled music content. sec.gov

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