I think we've gotten into this weird spot where tech companies are almost goading each other into layoffs. I don't doubt that there was some overexpansion during COVID, but it seems to have shifted. Tech companies have signaled to the market that staffing numbers were too high (regardless of profitability), and that investors want to see them brought back down. These layoffs don't really seem to be an indication of company strength, and the golden parachutes that a lot of these companies are offering can't really be that helpful to the bottom line (5mo + unused PTO + benefits in this case for Spotify). It's just playing things up for a certain audience while the general public is largely distracted.
Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
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Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#102Just learned that Spotify made all the private playlist (along the playlist' label) public.
Someone posted about it the other thread for the same news.
I am shocked.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#103I got asked to do a survey when I opened the Spotify app last week. All the questions were of a "What would you do if this price rise happened?" and most of the varieties had the family plan going to £20.99. I don't know what they are smoking to think that they're worth more than a Netflix subscription. Video > audio. If they put the family plan price up I'll cancel it and use Prime Music or something.
SiriusXM costs from $18-$23/month for ad free streaming. That’s channels instead of on demand playback. The prices that are being asked for make me wish we just had a better successor to FM radio.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#104The Spotify app constantly frustrates me and I miss the old Google Play Music app. - I listened to 5 minutes of one episode of a podcast once, decided it wasn't for me and stopped, but ever since then I have an entire pane on my homepage dedicated to my apparent love for that podcast. - The first 4 sections of the homepage recommend me exactly the same things - I have the last 6 albums I listened to at the top, then…
I use Deezer instead of Spotify, I don't know if it's better or worse, but what I can tell you is that I miss Google Play Music everyday.
Deezer has a lot of interface problems too.
I think that Deezer is better because there is a button to 'don't recommend this track/artist'. I can filter the things that I dislike.
Another positive thing about Deezer is that it shows less popups and notifications than Spotify.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#105The tide is turning; tech owners are attempting to curtail the high costs of labor in the software industry. The only way for labor to fight back is to stand together and form a union.
Outside the US, labour costs are already quite low though.
Although I agree, they're going to get even lower. To quote Neal Stephenson:
> the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#106The tide is turning; tech owners are attempting to curtail the high costs of labor in the software industry. The only way for labor to fight back is to stand together and form a union.
Isn’t it possible that the high costs just aren’t sustainable for businesses that just don’t make any money?
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#107I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they wouldn't need to lay people off. Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays for itself. Spotify is stingy AF with the artists that drove people to the service, and then firehoses Rogan with cash and tries to shove podcasts down people's throats. I was a happy Spotify sub…
If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks?
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#108Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you - music keeps me entertained all day, it has far more value to me. But isn't there an argument to be made that the infrastructure requirements for video is huge compared to music? The requirements to store and stream enough 4k video all day every day to satisfy millions of users is monstrous and that has to factor into the cost. I wouldn't expect streaming audio to be nearly that costly.
The only reason music streaming is so cheap is because it's a commodity. There's several multi-billion dollar corporations all competing with largely identical products. There's not much else than price to compete on. Video services compete on exclusive content, so they can make subjective value considerations around how valuable certain content is to certain groups.
And, related is that there's a royalty/copyright structure in music that means those multi-billion dollar companies can stream almost anything they want for a known low dollar amount.
There's also an almost infinite supply of good music--past and present--out there. There just isn't a lot of incentive for most audio streaming services to invest in exclusive content--the odd podcast notwithstanding.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#110I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they wouldn't need to lay people off. Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays for itself. Spotify is stingy AF with the artists that drove people to the service, and then firehoses Rogan with cash and tries to shove podcasts down people's throats. I was a happy Spotify sub…
If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks?
>If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks?
Where does OP say that Spotify is "morally obligated to keep writing paychecks"?