Acquired wraps up a big few weeks of coverage with not an IPO or an M&A or a fundraising round, but what’s still the largest tech exit in recent memory: Spotify’s $30B direct public listing. We dive into what it all means and how we got here: from Napster to iTunes to Facebook (and even some Justin Timberlake thrown in for good measure). Acquired FM is on the scene and spinning all the hits from this new wave music industry titan! 

Note: We incorrectly described Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s ownership stake in Spotify as 25%+; that is actually his voting control. His economic ownership is 9.3%, and cofounder Martin Lorentzon’s is 12.4%. We apologize for the error!

Sponsors:

• Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
• WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
• Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25
• Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26

More Acquired!

• Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
• Join the Slack
• Subscribe to ACQ2
• Merch Store!

© Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC

Links:

•  Internet History Podcast on the Napster Story with Jordan Ritter
•  Sean Parker’s email to Daniel Ek

Carve Outs:

• Ben: Black Panther (and  soundtrack on Spotify!)
• David: “Silicon Ballet” panel at San Francisco Ballet on Saturday, April 28