Spotify could get its IPO as soon as 6 months from now

Owning a slice of music streaming giant Spotify may get a lot simpler this fall.

The company is reportedly considering a fall IPO, according to Quartz, which cites unnamed sources it says are “familiar with the process.” Spotify is chatting it up with investment banks in informal meetings, say the publication’s sources.

A flurry of recent news has fueled the Spotify IPO rumor mill: The Swedish streaming music service last month decided to hire a finance wonk, and earlier this month it secured a $200 million credit line from lenders. It even snapped up music data provider Echo Nest, which powers Spotify’s radio service.

Spotify raised a $250 million funding round late last year, which it plans to use to further develop its platform and continue expanding in international markets. A fall IPO seems rather soon after such a massive financing.

But, then again, Spotify is a fairly mature startup. It’s available in dozens of markets around the globe, following a recent push into Asian territories like Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. It has over 24 million monthly active listeners and six million paying subscribers. Despite the company’s losses, that subscriber base may prove attractive to prospective investors wary of advertising-centric companies.

Spotify competitor Pandora went public in 2011, though that company has a drastically different business model: 88 percent of Pandora’s revenue comes from advertising with the rest coming from subscribers, while 85 percent of Spotify’s revenue comes from subscribers and the rest comes from advertising, according to business research firm PrivCo.

A Spotify representative declined to comment on the company’s IPO plans in an email to VentureBeat.