Spotify Plans To Announce Layoffs This Week: Report

In an effort to cut costs, another big tech company, Spotify Technology SA, plans to cut jobs, joining tech companies announcing layoffs to cut costs. The company could announce layoffs as early as this week, according to Bloomberg.

The company, which laid off 38 people from its Gimlet Media and podcast studios in October and podcast editorial staff in September, is planning more layoffs, the report said, without specifying how many.

Founded in April 2006 by Daniel EK and Martin Lorentzon, Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media service provider. It is one of the largest providers of music streaming services, with more than 456 million monthly active users as of September 2022, including 195 million paying subscribers, according to one website. Spotify, with 60 billion tracks and 1.9 million podcasts, is said to be one of the popular destinations for music and other audio content, according to website information.

According to Spotify’s third-quarter earnings report, the music streaming giant currently has about 9,800 employees. In addition, since 2019, Spotify has invested heavily in podcasts, spending more than $1 billion on acquisitions and copyrights of popular shows, but these investments have yet to show returns, and the stock price has fallen 66% in the last year. In late June, Spotify executives said the podcast business would be profitable within the next one to two years, the news report added.

In October 2021, the music streaming company reported a 19% increase in paying subscribers for its premium service, driven by demand in Europe and North America, according to Reuters.

Late last week, Google announced it would be laying off 6 percent of its workforce of 12,000 worldwide, according to Industry Insights. Amazon also announced 18,000 layoffs. Meta, the parent company of social media platform Facebook, also laid off 11,000 employees in November.