Spotify's introduction to Wall Street has stuck the right chords

Overcoming Apple Music in terms of investment, Spotify has seen a successful introduction to Wall Street.

On Tuesday morning, Spotify traded shares as high as $169 in their stock. They fell slightly back to $149.01 a number of hours later but closed in on those figures there. In contrast to their previous high of $132.50 last year, it shows the progress the privately-held company has been making.

This has left Spotify’s market value among the 10 highest ever recorded by a technology company following their first day of U.S. trading, according to Dealogic. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek who founded the company, emerged as the day’s biggest winner. His 27 percent stake in the Swedish company is now worth $7.4 billion.

With over 71 million worldwide subscribers so far, Spotify aims to increase that number to as many as 96 million subscribers by the end of the year. It has 159 million total users, including people who are willing to listen to ads for access to free music.

However, Spotify still isn’t profitable, having lost more than 2.4 billion euros ($3 billion) since it started more than a decade ago. After losing 1.2 billion euro, Spotify has also made it clear that it intends to remain focused on adding more subscribers instead of making money for now.

Spotify Technology SA made the debut on Wall Street using “direct listing” on the New York Stock Exchange that allows the company’s early investors and employees to sell as many shares as they want whenever they want.

The direct listing could result in wild swings in Spotify’s stock pricing during the first few days of trading, especially since Spotify’s shares sold in a range of $48.93 to $132.50 in privately negotiated transactions during the first 11 weeks of this year.