Things have heated up a lot in the online music streaming business over the past few months, including but not limited to some very big acquisitions. Google wants to be an established player in this niche as well. It is reportedly readying a new subscription based YouTube music service which will have improved recommendation features thanks to its acquisition of Songza. Multiple reports have claimed recently that Google may have been interested in acquiring Spotify.
Had Google been able to pick up the Swedish company it would have been able to instantly compete with the likes of Pandora and Beats Music. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google gave up plans to acquire Spotify because the price was too high.
The scribe doesn’t put a figure on the table but there’s speculation that the acquisition would have cost Google between $4-5 billion. Apparently talks between the two companies broke down over price and it looks like Google wasn’t willing to spend a big chunk out of its $30 billion non-US acquisition account on Spotify.
Recode reported recently that Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has met with Google to talk about “commercial deals” which involve Android or YouTube. It also claims that Google’s YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki would be very much interested in acquiring Spotify if the company decides to sell itself, so there’s a faint possibility that at some point in the future these two companies could become one.