Spotify AG has raised $526 million Series G in a round that included Baillie Gifford, Landsdowne Partners, Rinkelberg, Senvest Capital, Discovery Capital Management, Goldman Sachs, Halcyon Asset Management, GSV Capital, D.E. Shaw & Co., Technology Crossover Ventures, Northzone, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management and TeliaSonera.

According to The Wall Street Journal the deal was on a valuation of $8.53 billion.

TeliaSonera, who has previously worked with Spotify, invested $115 million for a 1.4 percent stake as part of a new partnership deal that will see both companies committing resources, staff and other assets “to ignite the joint innovation agenda within areas such as media distribution, customer insights, data analytics and advertising.”

A joint TeliaSonera-Spotify team will be set up to run the projects, according to a statement from the company.

“We have a long and great relationship with TeliaSonera and I’m pleased we’re able to take this to the next level together with this strategic partnership,” Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Spotify Daniel Ek said.

Founded in 2006, Spotify is a leader in the streaming music space, and offers both a much derided (by copyright holders) free tier that is ad supported, as well as a paid tier where users pay a set amount a month (roughly $10 a month depending on the country) to listen to music ad-free, and restriction free.

Spotify is said to have 60 million users overall, and 15 million paid subscribers.

Busy times

May and June have been a busy time for Spotify, with the company extending its offerings into video and podcasts for the first time. Still to roll out across all Spotify products, that deal saw content from ABC, Adult Swim, BBC, Comedy Central, E!, ESPN, Fusion, Maker Studios, MTV, NBC, RadioLab, Slate, TED, TWiT, Vice News and WNYC be included, at least at first, in Spotify’s iOS app.

The last month also saw an increase in speculation around a competing product from Apple, with the product, Apple Music, finally being launched this week at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference.

Much has been noted about Apple Music’s similarities to Spotify, although there was one notable difference: pricing in multi-user, family subscriptions, with Apple offering a $14.99 family pack usable by 6 people, compared to the $29.99 Spotify charges for 5 people.

Spotify’s Global Head of Communications and Public Policy Jonathan Price has since said that Spotify will likely move to match that price.

The funding comes at a right time for Spotify as Apple brings its might to market to challenge Spotify’s current dominance of the music streaming business.

Including the new round, Spotify has raised at least $1.1 billion to-date (the amount of a secondary market raising in 2012 was not disclosed.) Investors who didn’t participate in the new round include AFSquare, The Coca-Cola Company, Fidelity Ventures, Lakestar, DST Global, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Sean Parker, and others.

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