Is Spotify about to buy SoundCloud?

The report says that talks are at an advanced stage, with the deal said to be worth £350 million.

The move is meant to compete against rivals like Apple Music, which now has 17 million users to Spotify’s 40 million paid subscribers.

Spotify, who has a paying customer base of over 40 million subscribers, is interested in boosting its userbase with Soundcloud’s community, estimated to be around 200 million users, most on free accounts.

If a bigger indie streamer buys a smaller one, consolidating their user bases, that gives them both better odds of long-term survival against the tech conglomerates. At the time, SoundCloud was reportedly valued at $700 million.

Of course, we have no confirmation that Spotify is even purchasing SoundCloud, so it’s probably too early to speculate what it would do with the company once it does acquire it.

A number of music streaming services already exist in the Japanese market, including local initiatives like Line and Awa as well as global ones from the likes of Apple and Google.

It’s now unclear what Spotify purchasing SoundCloud would mean for either company, and if that would mean the end of SoundCloud’s own paid streaming service. The biggest leg up either service can hope for is access to music that the other doesn’t have, and SoundCloud has a huge library of remixes, bootlegs, and tracks from independent artists. For Apple and Amazon, which operates Amazon Prime Music, its music streaming platforms are additional products that supplement the core of their businesses.

Spotify has launched its online music service in Japan. Spotify’s free option will be ad-supported, while subscriptions will be priced at 980 yen ($9.70) per month.

With Spotify now hitting Japan, the service has reached 60 territories worldwide, amassing 100 million users in the process.