Spotify’s free streaming model now faces competition from Google, Amazon

Spotify is in an odd place as the company releases its latest earnings report Monday. The streaming service rules its industry with 36 percent of the global market, as of last year, but its competitors are some of the world’s largest companies—namely, Google, Apple and Amazon. Now this month, Google and Amazon have both created new, free, ad-based tiers of their music services, cutting at Spotify’s main profit model.