Spotify's stock will start trading on April 3 and the company will provide full-year financial guidance on March 26, executives said on Thursday.
Co-founder Daniel Ek told investors that the company was focused on transparency and that his plan for the future focused on: upgrading free users to premium subscribers, reaching scale on many platforms (especially smartphones, speakers and cars), and personalized data from users, who spend about 49 minutes a day on the platform on average.
Spotify's revelations come ahead of its non-traditional public listing. The music-streaming company is expected to forgo IPO traditions like underwriters and a lock-up period when it lists on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker name SPOT.
Spotify had an operating loss of $461.3 million last year and revenue of $4.99 billion. It has 71 million paying subscribers and more than 159 million monthly active listeners (MAUs) as of December 2017. According to the company, shares have traded as high as $132.50 on private markets.
Pandora shares were down about 2 percent after the start of Spotify's investor day.
Spotify faces some steep competition from rivals like Apple and Amazon. But Ek said he felt the connection between artists and Spotify has been misunderstood, and likened it to some of the roles played by record labels over the years. Ek also said he hopes that Spotify can support millions more jobs for musical artists by helping them monetize their work.
He said that unlike rivals, he doesn't plan to focus on selling "hardware" or "books." Executives at the event also touted Spotify's early entrance to the smart speaker market on Amazon's Echo devices (Apple's version was just recently released). Executives also said that Spotify is working on more visual elements for song and podcast releases.
While most of Spotify's revenue comes from premium ad-free memberships, Spotify's ad executives also noted that the platform doesn't struggle as much with advertiser trust, an issue that YouTube is currently dealing with.
"I think we could have done a better job of telling our story before today," Ek said. "Music streaming has returned the music industry back to growth."