Why Spotify might take a page out of Netflix’s playbook

Does Spotify believe it can become the Netflix of music? Wall Street is listening hard for an answer.

Daniel Ek, the 35-year-old boss of the Swedish music streamer, has lately insisted that Spotify isn’t interested in competing with record labels in the way that Netflix competes with Hollywood studios by producing series like “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.”

Nevertheless, some insiders believe the only hope for Spotify to wrest control of its business — and specifically, its margins — from the record labels is to cut deals directly with A-list mega-acts like Taylor Swift and Drake.

That’s a prospect that already has music execs bracing for a brawl as Spotify’s streaming contracts with the “big three” music labels come up for renewal next year. In Spotify’s best-case scenario, its growing subscriber base — the world’s biggest in music — would enable it to sign up a handful of big-name artists while keeping the labels on board.

Worst case: Spotify, which reports third-quarter earnings on Thursday, could be out of a streaming deal with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment or Warner Music Group.

“If we don’t renew with Spotify, it would be a bad year for us,” a label executive told The Post. “But it would be fatal for them.”

No one wants this “nuclear scenario,” the exec added, but he left no doubt the next round of license-renewal negotiations will be less collegial than in 2016.

That’s when the big labels feared that Spotify’s anemic margins could tank the streaming service. At the time, the industry wanted to keep Spotify afloat to offset the outsize clout of Apple Music.

Now, some argue that Spotify — whose paying subscriber base has grown to 83 million and counting — should take a page from Netflix, which just last week raised $2 billion in debt to fund a new crop of homegrown shows.

“No reason why Spotify couldn’t do the same, paying advances that other labels couldn’t compete with,” MIDiA Research analyst Mark Mulligan wrote in a blog post this week. “Taylor Swift is on the lookout for a new label. And Drake is putting out ‘albums’ so frequently that he must be pushing up close to the end of his deal.”

Nevertheless, insiders note that each of the big three labels has more clout than any of the Hollywood studios ever did over Netflix, with the ability to retaliate by offering exclusives and promotions to rivals like Pandora and Google Play.

What’s more, new albums rarely command the wide audience that a blockbuster TV series does. And while Netflix is far cheaper than cable TV, Spotify is up against a host of cheap and free music-streaming options.