Its worth noting that Universal, BMG, Warner Bros and EMI are all investors Spotify. It's kind of an odd situation in that respect, the labels don't need Spotify to go public but their other investors do.
The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.
With respect to accounting, you don't recoup your investment (where you purchased part of a company) by collecting licensing fees (which you'd have received anyway) from the same company.
Their actual financial investment in the company was likely nominal if anything at all. Spotify likely offered an ownership stake as an incentive to get the labels to take a chance on an unknown company and an unproven model.
Whether Spotify goes public or not the labels have already made out very handsomely was my point. That's the $5 billion that Spotify often states that it has paid out to rights holders. So yes it very much has borne fruit, $5 billion worth. If the company goes public its basically gravy for them.
The record labels were decimated back in 2006/2007 when Spotify started. Things looked pretty bleak for the industry as a whole. So yes the labels needed to do something as their revenues has pretty much dried up comparatively to a decade earlier.
That wasn't the idea I was trying to put though. I don't think the labels necessarily want to see a weak Spotify but only that the status quo is just fine for them. They would be happy to see the current situation remain in perpetuity I think. Spotify investors however do not.
The big 4 record labels are the recipients of the $5 billion that the company has paid out in royalties to date. They've surely recouped any initial investment they put in by now. So they kind of have a vested interest at the moment anyway for keeping things just as they are.