Spotify Considering Raising Monthly Fee for Ad-Free Subscription

Spotify Technology SA intends to raise the cost of its premium subscription, which offers an ad-free experience for its music and podcast streaming service, by $1 per month.

The timing of the increase – which would raise the price to about $11 a month – is not certain, but it could be announced as early as next week, said a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who asked not to be identified. The higher price would fit Spotify’s intention, which Bloomberg initially reported last month, to introduce a premium plan with high-quality audio.

The news published by the Wall Street Journal earlier on Friday raised Spotify up to 4.1 percent in intraday trading. Shares fell less than 1 percent to $171.71.

The music streaming leader has been extreme in holding the line on prices after rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. raised theirs over the past year.

Spotify’s CEO’s startup Neko Health attracts big-name backers

(Bloomberg) Medical diagnostics company Neko Health, founded by Spotify Technology SA CEO Daniel Ek, raised 60 million euros ($65.4 million) in venture capital to expand beyond its native Sweden.

Bloomberg Business

(Bloomberg) — Medical diagnostics company Neko Health, founded by Spotify Technology SA CEO Daniel Ek, raised 60 million euros ($65.4 million) in venture capital to expand beyond its native Sweden.

Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom joins the company’s board with his investment vehicle Atomico, as does Klaus Hommels, whose venture capital firm Lakestar led the seed investment. Palo Alto-based General Catalyst also participated. Neko Health did not disclose the valuation.

“I have spent more than 10 years exploring the untapped potential of healthcare innovation,” Ek said in a statement ahead of the announcement on Wednesday. “We are dedicated to building a health care system that focuses on prevention and patient care, with the goal of serving not only our generation but the next.”

Neko Health operates private clinics equipped with proprietary and off-the-shelf diagnostic products, most notably its own full-body 3D scanner. It contains dozens of sensors that, when combined with the company’s artificial intelligence software, can provide immediate results on possible skin conditions, such as moles, as well as warning signs of cardiovascular health.

“We have our own nurses, doctors and specialists,” Hjalmar Nilsonne, co-founder and CEO of Neko Health, said in an interview. “We have dermatologists at our service just to look at skin photos. We have a doctor on hand who can make sound medical decisions about anything that comes up.”

The company’s first clinic was opened in February in Stockholm. The patient pays €250 for a full-body examination, which takes 10-20 minutes, after which the examination is done with the doctor. The company has completed more than 1,000 scans since launch, but Nilsonne says thousands more are on a waiting list. About 80% of customers have paid in advance for follow-up examinations performed after one year.

Covid-19 had been a boon for companies such as telehealth startup Ro – which was also backed by General Catalyst – as patients sought virtual treatment from their homes. But Neko Health is focusing on clinic evaluation for now, with on-site medical experts evaluating and advising on client outcomes, Nilsonne said.

“I come from a family of doctors,” he said. “My grandfather had his own clinic here in Stockholm over a hundred years ago, both of my parents are doctors and professors, and my oldest brother is a doctor and neuroscientist. This is very much the world I grew up in.”

The same couldn’t be said for Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos. Investor scrutiny of health tech startups is likely to increase in the wake of the scandal, but Nilsonne said he is confident Neko Health’s backers will see the different approach he and Ek take.

“Everything they did was secret,” he said of Theranos. “We’re pretty transparent about what we do and how it works.”

Nilsonne said Ek contacted him in 2018, around the time of Spotify’s IPO and when Nilsonne’s previous company, Watty, was wound up before being sold to a German buyer, though the deal ultimately fell through.

“Daniel thought, ‘How can I do something good for the world?'” Nilsonne said. “It was 2018 and we didn’t have a plan of what to really do, but we started talking and he said, ‘You know, we should really do something in healthcare.’

Nilsonne said that the additional investments will go to building clinics in other European countries. On the career page of the company’s website, on July 3, a doctor was opened in London, whose main tasks include managing the process of opening a private medical practice.

– The so-called experts have told us that with Brexit and everything, maybe the UK should be the last market we look at, Nilsonne told Bloomberg Television in a separate interview on Wednesday. “But we feel differently. We’d like to help in Great Britain. It’s a great country and we hope we can do something there soon.”