Spotify to set up Istanbul office next year

Music streaming giant Spotify will establish an office in Turkey next year, months after the government launched an investigation into unfair competition practices.

“A significant gap is being addressed: Spotify’s Turkey office is opening,” Turkish culture and tourism minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said in a post on social messaging platform X.

“Spotify, which will open an office in Istanbul in 2026, will further deepen collaborations in this field,” he said.

The success of Turkish artists broke records on world charts by reaching 2.8 billion new listeners in 2024, the minister said, adding the partnership with Spotify will be beneficial for Ankara’s cultural diplomacy efforts.

More than half of royalty revenues come from listeners outside Turkey, Ersoy said.

In July, the Turkish Competition Authority said that Spotify’s strategies and policies cause anti-competitive impacts in the music industry, offering preferential treatment to certain artists or content creators, particularly in terms of their visibility on the platform.

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Spotify has over 100 million tracks, nearly seven million podcast titles and 350,000 audiobooks, according to the company’s website. It has 696 million users, including 276 million subscribers in 180 markets.

In May 2024 Turkey fined social media giant Meta Platforms $37.2 million for breaching regulations on free and fair competition.