Spotify could be facing a big a competitor in the future with Sony, the same Company that partner with via Playstation Music now exploring going it alone.
According to the head of Sony Music Rob Stringer the Japanese Company has not ruled out launching a rival streaming service to Spotify.
Stringer took over as CEO of Sony in April 2017 and has seen the company’s revenues jump by 12% to top $4bn.
That followed Sony acquiring a stake in a music publishing venture previously held by Michael Jackson’s estate, giving it ownership of more than two million classic songs.
“We have hundreds of thousands of tracks going back 100 years, so we have quite a lot of leverage,” Rob Stringer told BBC Radio 4 in the UK.
“Do we want to take all our stuff off a major streaming platform? No… because we have an arrangement that’s working for both of us at the moment.
“But the next chapter, which might be in five years, who knows?”
These include tracks by Queen, Carole King and the Motown catalogue, along with contemporary hits by Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Drake and Pink.
“From our point of view, it’s all about timing,” he said. “Maybe we will do something that will give us more control over distribution.
“But you can’t argue that in this particular chapter, Spotify [are] leading the way. They built a robust and futuristic distribution model.”
Back in 2010, Sony launched a music and video download service intended to challenge Apple’s iTunes.
Five years later it closed its Music Unlimited service to launch PlayStation Music in conjunction with Spotify.