What if you bought Spotify in 2020?
World · Sweden. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play4.7× · S&P 500 same money: $2,092
$1,000 in Spotify at the start of 2020 would be worth about $4,667 today — 4.7 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Spotify was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, as a legal answer to music piracy. It persuaded record labels to license their catalogues for streaming and built a freemium model that turned hundreds of millions of people into regular listeners. It listed in New York in 2018 through a direct listing, skipping the traditional IPO process, which was unusual at the time.
For years the complaint was that Spotify had a great product and a terrible business: labels took most of the revenue, and it rarely made money. From 2020 the shares doubled during the pandemic as it spent heavily on podcasts, including the acquisition of Gimlet and a high-profile exclusive with Joe Rogan. When growth stocks crashed in 2022, Spotify fell by more than 75 percent from its peak. It responded with layoffs, price increases and a sharper focus on profit, posting its first full year of profit in 2024. The shares then soared to record highs, ending the period several times higher than in 2020.
The lesson: Investors can punish heavy spending in search of growth, but a company that pivots to discipline and pricing power can regain trust faster than expected.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $150 | $4,667 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2020, turning $1,000 into $4,667. The S&P 500 from that same year: $2,092.
On this day
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Spotify is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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