Spotify reducing employee base by about 6% • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#331

Post by ben7799 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:05 PM UTC

maxwell wrote: post #286

default_png wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am currently on like £15 a month for 2x users on Spotify. >Why would artists give anything to you? Literally not my concern.

Spotify isn't profitable. Tidal isn't profitable. Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple probably earn a profit on their bundles, but if artists and labels aren't making money on streaming, how long until they start pulling their catalogs? Will you stop listening to music if/when the unprofitable music streaming services shut down? What happens if/when Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple are barred from tying and bundling their service…

It seems like most casual listeners just don't understand this no matter how many articles there are about the current model not being sustainable or how many time their favorite artists complain about it.

There is not enough money in music for both the record companies and spotify, et. al. to simultaneously rob the artists. These streaming companies being the new middle man are going to be the first to lose out. Especially if the record companies wake up and start making their own stores/services.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#332

Post by saurik » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #198

saurik wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can build and add Dropbox-like functionality to their product suite (and I was even involved in a couple such efforts a while back)... but Spotify is not at all like that, in that not only is having the music licenses they have more than just some engineering work, people bring their music to Spotify , and so you can't even have a few ins and a major investor and then try and quickly get the same licenses to h…

Very few actually feel good about bringing their music to spotify. Other than the very few giant artists getting the sweetheart deals with guaranteed payouts most feel like they're forced to bring their music to spotify even though they know the whole thing is just bad.

I don't understand how this detail changes anything: you still can't just build a competitor to Spotify and magically have all of its music.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#333

Post by TingPing » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

xiwenc wrote: post #139

zajio1am wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, 20-30 year old media players were better. So what the point of it all is...I have no idea. I would say that Spotify does not compete with traditional media players, it competes with radio. If i want to listen to my favorite songs, there is no reason to use Spotify for that. But if i want something different-but-similar and i do not really know what, because i am not very interested in music, then discovera…

Spotify should serve both audiences: consistency and discover new ones. I think Apple Music got it right. I like how you can start a radio of any song. Or just play your own favorites.

Spotify has always had "Song Radio".

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#334

Post by gedaxiang » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #323

kypro wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but a lot of these companies massively over hired over the last couple of years. While others were losing their jobs during the pandemic tech employees were in higher demand than ever. In fact, I'd argue the demand for tech workers has been so high over the last couple of years that a lot of people who really shouldn't have got a job based on their experience were able to do so. I…

There's another way to look at it, though. Without unions, employees are disposable. Companies hire them when money is plentiful and throw them away when it's convenient. It clearly benefits the employers and investors to operate that way. With a union, employees aren't so dispensable, and companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim. Despite being more stabl…

> companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim

that would make it harder to find a new job, right? tradeoffs to consider

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#335

Post by rpep » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #31

dataengineer56 wrote: post #15

The 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…

"How can such a simple concept (listen to music) get so many basics so wrong and have such glaring bugs?" Spotify internally has a model where they have a large number of small teams where each is responsible for only a tiny part of the experience. Possibly this leads to a lack of a coherent experience. The other factor may be the constant experimentation. Frankly, 20-30 year old media players were better. So what th…

The most frustrating one for me is that saving an album doesn’t add the Artist to your artists list in your Library.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#336

Post by jupp0r » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #156

phamilton4 wrote: post #127

I get needing to keep a company lean and that businesses operate to make money... But most of these recent layoffs really make me feel uneasy. Spotify is a little different because AFAIK they are still operating at a negative net income, but still let's take a look at this. They're going to let go 600 people.. that's maybe an annual 90 million in savings (150k salary). The company's revenue is about 9 billion with -3…

It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead weight which is much bigger than 6%. If you start figuring some of your moonshot ideas aren't hitting their OKR's, you have a few options: * Just let them keep doing whatever without delivering what they claim they can * Create new moonshots for them just because * Move them to other products, but that doesn't mean they'll create more value as an org with (now)…

You also transform a good percentage of your high performers into low performers (until they leave and high perform somewhere else). I've seen it happen every time.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#337

Post by bobkazamakis » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #307

bastardoperator wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is that complex. Who benefits from these mass layoffs? Everyone at the top benefits, and everyone at the bottom suffers. You are spot on when it comes to impact of layoffs. If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that. To your point, I can't take any executive seriously if they're not self reflecting on their own failure. Mass layoffs should equal a new board i…

> If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that. In Spotify’s case, the business not making money, and hence not having a stock price that keeps up with the market, is also a way to destroy productivity. Higher productivity people are probably not going to want to work at a charity.

>Higher productivity people are probably not going to want to work at a charity.

Have you seen the things people create in minecraft entirely for free?

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#338

Post by notyourwork » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

karl11 wrote: post #157

phamilton4 wrote: post #127

I get needing to keep a company lean and that businesses operate to make money... But most of these recent layoffs really make me feel uneasy. Spotify is a little different because AFAIK they are still operating at a negative net income, but still let's take a look at this. They're going to let go 600 people.. that's maybe an annual 90 million in savings (150k salary). The company's revenue is about 9 billion with -3…

Revenue is irrelevant when looking at savings, you have to look at net revenue or gross margin. Majority of Spotify’s revenue goes to record labels. If you are making -40mm / yr then a $90mm swing is a huge deal. Also, can’t just look at salary - employees cost a lot more than their salary. 10% employer tax, health care, other ancillary benefits, IT equipment / space, etc. A $150k salary probably costs the company $2…

My vague recollection from an HR person was employees are 1.5x or 2.5x (something like that) their salary as a cost to the company. So $250k sounds about in the middle.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#339

Post by wreath » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

phatfish wrote: post #42

wreath wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't stand, not even listening, but having opposed views sharing tenancy in the same software as where your music is?

Not just sharing the same "software". If the parent has a paid Spotify subscription they are directly funding his podcast. Admittedly there are probably other podcasts they might not like too, but Joe is certainly the biggest ass on platform and got a mountain of subscriber money for the exclusive deal.

how exactly is he an ass? He brings in people he likes to talk to. They spit out bullshit sometimes, interesting stuff other times. He happens to record those conversations and make shit ton of money out of them. I'm sure there are far whorse podcasts and content online and on Spotify (a lot of black metal is straight up racist shit yet its on Spotify). Rogan gets shit for being the archetype of everything the left hates.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#340

Post by DeRock » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

phamilton4 wrote: post #197

achiang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to use the fully loaded cost of an employee when estimating opex savings, which includes health care costs, retirement funding, etc. Rule of thumb is that fully loaded cost for US employees is approximately 2x yearly salary (although people who've actually run a company can correct my potentially stale or incorrect understanding).

Understand 2x, I was also looking across all the jobs at spotify. There are some that go as low as 70k salary, a majority seem to be 170k+. It was just for ease of calculation. even if we take 500k that's still 0.033% of revenue -_-

You aren't using percentages correctly, I think you mean 3.3% (and 1% in your original comment). Also, as pointed elsewhere, revenue is not really relevant, majority of that cash flows directly to artists/labels.