Spotify to Layoff 6% of its Workforce

After laying off around 38 employees in October last year, Spotify, the music and media streaming giant, is about to lay off around 6% of its staff (roughly 590 employees). As per its December quarter earnings report, Spotify had a total of 9,800 employees globally. 

While writing an email to its staff, which was published on Spotify’s website, Spotify chief Daniel Ek said, “I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us.”

He highlighted how he was ambitious in investing ahead of their revenue growth. Citing the same reason, Ek said, “Today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company”.

It is noteworthy that the music streaming giant made a significant investment in podcasting starting in 2019. It is estimated that the company spent over a billion dollars buying podcast networks and the rights to a number of well-known programmes, including the Joe Rogan Experience.

Owing to the number of investments which couldn’t bring results, Spotify’s share prices too have tumbled down 66% in last one year, which further fuelled investors’ discomfort. According to their executives, the podcast business might become profitable in next one to two years. 

This is the third significant tech layoff in the last week. In a letter to staff on January 18, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that the company would be eliminating 11,000 jobs, or about 5% of the total workforce, in order to offset a global slowdown in tech and advertising investment among businesses due to inflationary fears. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, also disclosed intentions to lay off 12,000 workers on Friday, or about 6% of its staff.