“Just four music companies control the rights to 87% of the music streamed on Spotify,” says the Hargreaves analyst Laith Khalaf, “which gives them a healthy bargaining position when it comes to getting their pound of flesh from Spotify’s revenues.” The company has paid out some $10bn in royalties to artists, music labels, and publishers so far, according to the financial services company Hargreaves Lansdown, and it is obliged to pay at least $2bn in further royalty payments over the next three years. Its losses are down to it paying more in licensing than it can afford – even as the amount that trickles down to many artists is less than they can survive on. The company has to license its library through the same bottleneck of major labels as any other player in the streaming world, and for the time being the labels still hold all the cards. Its relationship with the music industry incumbents– that is, the companies that produce the records – is one major obstacle. Spotify lost $1.5bn last year, up from losses of $650m the year before. The industry has never regained the profitability it enjoyed before the likes of Napster ripped up its business model. Music is a very different industry to film and television, and the competitive landscape it finds itself in brings challenges that Netflix has never had to face.

But there are reasons to doubt Spotify can pull off the same level of success as Netflix. Lofty aims, couched in the aspirational terms that those in Silicon Valley like to espouse.

What is spotify worth