Spotify has reached the 60m paying subscriber mark, as it heads toward going public in the fourth quarter of this year.

According to the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, the music streaming service will list its shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange – as opposed to going down the traditional initial public offering (IPO) route.

Spotify has added 20m paid subscribers in the past year, fending off the threats from the likes of Apple, Amazon and Google. In comparison, Spotify’s closest rival Apple Music only has 27m paid subscribers in total, as of June. In addition, Spotify also boasts more than 100m free customers, and was valued at $8.5bn following a $526m funding round in 2015.

Despite this, according to a report in March, Apple Music boasts more monthly unique users (MAUs) than Spotify. At the time, Apple was said to have 40.7m MAUs, as opposed to Spotify 32.6m.

In other news, Spotify is testing the waters in areas other than music. According to Bloomberg, the company has agreed to promote podcasts in its app and via ads on buses – as long as the hosts of ‘Reply All’, ‘Pod Save America’ and ‘The Bill Simmons Podcast’ agree to shout out Spotify on social media and during shows.