Spotify was fairly recently aiming to purchase SoundCloud, but it looks like those talks have fallen through and Spotify has backed out of the deal. There aren't any concrete details about what derailed the plans, but it might have something to do with Spotify's plans to go public next year.
That's also mostly speculation at this point, because Spotify hasn't officially said they'll be going public next year, either. However, negotiating a licensing deal after acquiring SoundCloud would definitely throw some kinks into an IPO, so it would make sense to want to put things off until after the fact. It does raise the question of why Spotify would even enter talks with SoundCloud to begin with, unless the plans to go public only solidified in the past few weeks.
Other details to the rumor suggest that SoundCloud tried to be purchased by Spotify twice over the past two years, so it could also be that SoundCloud is desperately trying to get acquired by a bigger company but Spotify just couldn't reach a price that would make all the potential headaches worth it.
This will also probably make more sense early next year after we find out if a Spotify IPO is actually happening. Until then, we'll just have to keep dreaming about SoundCloud tracks and remixes in a Spotify library.
source: TechCrunch
