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Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

newsroom.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#381

Post by bananapub »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #302
bananapub wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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: there's been so many versions of this low quality comment on every tech-company-mass-firing article. why is so little thought put into it? if the company feels it can save on salaries then: 1. close down projects that aren'…

Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the structure you're describing - there's a company-wide search for projects that aren't pulling their weight, those projects are shut down, and the employees whose roles no longer make sense without the projects that will be shut down get laid off. > would you suggest saving data storage costs by deleting 6% o…

> Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the structure you're describing - there's a company-wide search for projects that aren't pulling their weight, those projects are shut down, and the employees whose roles no longer make sense without the projects that will be shut down get laid off.

? what are you talking about? The Google layoffs weren't like that, nor the Meta ones nor the Amazon, and I'm pretty sure the Spotify ones this article is about aren't either, though the post is very short.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#382

Post by plaidfuji »

gadders wrote: post #14

I 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.

> video > audio

Agreed, but keep in mind this is “access to virtually all available audio” vs “access to one particular channel/library of video”

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#383

Post by scarface74 »

saurik wrote: post #375
scarface74 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need all of its music. You need the three major music producers and the rest will come. But that’s not the point. The “feature not a product” saying means that a major company has your entire reason for existing as a feature in their product. Streaming music is already just a feature for Apple and Amazon. Just like today, you wouldn’t create a separate spell checker application like in the 80s.

> You need the three major music producers and the rest will come. This isn't how the market works. I know musicians, and they don't care that you are playing licensing monopoly/bingo and have 3 key squares and now they clearly are going to waste their time uploading their music to your service. You need to essentially already have the subscriber count to provide them a new revenue source that is greater than the pai…

> This isn't how the market works. I know musicians, and they don't care that you are playing licensing monopoly/bingo and have 3 key squares and now they clearly are going to waste their time uploading their music to your service. You need to essentially already have the subscriber count to provide them a new revenue source that is greater than the pain of dealing with you... which forms a brutal catch-22.

You keep acting as if there aren’t two trillion dollar market cap companies that don’t already have streaming services that don’t have to be profitable.

You also act like the day that Apple announced “Apple Music” every musician wasn’t scrambling to get on the platform.

> Spell checking, like Dropbox, has no network effect and no first mover advantage.

If Facebook announced tomorrow that they were going to release “Facebook Streaming” they already have an audience. We aren’t talking about Joe Bobs Music streaming service.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#384

Post by agluszak »

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…

> The queuing functionality is horrible. There's way to add a new album to the end of the current queue.

That's precisely why I chose Tidal over Spotify when GPM died

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#385

Post by moonchrome »

alldayeveryday wrote: post #354
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…

Who benefitted from the mass hirings? Stock holders, and also workers. Did the workers complain when the job market (esp in tech) was on fire and wages were increasing? No. Did they blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? No. But, now they want to blame leaders when there are mass layoffs. I think the blame is misplaced. The root cause was the stock market, and better yet blame the fed. The incentive…

This - basically both decisions are driven by stock market charades - growth at all costs when interest was low - cost cutting when revenue drops.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#386

Post by htag »

survirtual wrote: post #270
htag wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the days-of-old to gain a skill you needed an apprenticeship. To gain an apprenticeship you can to become a guild member. This created a moat, where only guild members were highly skilled. How do you purpose to market guild labor over non-guild labor, especially at a time when anyone can earn a CS degree, publish open source, and right to work laws pepper the country.

Guild-owned technology, created with human-aligned intentions (as opposed to greed-aligned). Human-centric tech is superior to capital-centric tech. Open source is basically this in a naive and unorganized way, especially when MIT licensed (a giant con in my opinion). GNU does much better. But if there existed a guild license connected to tech and patents that are must haves, it would tip the balance. The guild would…

What is this guild license, and how does it differ from the current system of having private companies own software licenses, tech patents, and trade secrets?

It sounds to me like you're just describing a tech company.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#387

Post by scarface74 »

saurik wrote: post #377
scarface74 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you even arguing this? There already exist two major competitors that are treating streaming music as just an insignificant portion of a multibillion dollar business - Amazon and Apple. Also to a lesser extent Google/YouTube. As far as the content that’s unavailable - it doesn’t matter. The long tail theory has been debunked decades ago ( https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/2018/long-tail-theor... ). You…

> Why are you even arguing this? There already exist two major competitors that are treating streaming music as just an insignificant portion of a multibillion dollar business - Amazon and Apple. Also to a lesser extent Google/YouTube. Amazon, Apple, and Google (to their lesser extent due to YouTube) are also in the content licensing business... the same business Spotify is in. Are you saying that iTunes, or Amazon.c…

> Are you saying that iTunes, or Amazon.com, is also a shitty business? I'm betting you aren't.

Yes, it is a shitty standalone business. The purpose of iTunes was to sell more iPods - the whole “commoditize your complements”.

The purpose of Apple Music was to be a “feature” to sell high margin Apple Watches, AirPods, HomePods, to integrate tightly with Siri, etc.

> If you are, I recommend looking at how much money Apple makes on iTunes: it is sufficient to have let them subsidize sales of the iPod.

That’s not what happened. SJ himself said that the purpose of iTunes was just to break even to sell iPods. iPods were high margin businesses. By the time Apple paid the labels 70% and then paid the credit card processing fees, it wasn’t make much selling 99 cent songs.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#388

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

overgard wrote: post #365
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're worried that people listen to him over the legacy news media, well, what does it say about them that somehow a comedian has more credibility than they do? It says absolutely nothing about the "legacy news media". It just means that many people are incredibly gullible. Joe Rogan does not have more credibility, but some people THINK he does, and that's the problem.

I think that's frankly a condescending world view. Who made you the arbiter of what's true and what's not? Listening to Joe Rogan doesn't mean you agree, it just means he brings on interesting guests and trusts his viewers to make up their own mind. Who do you think people are more inclined to listen to, someone that treats their audience with respect, or someone that calls a broad swath of the population idiots?

> Who made you the arbiter of what's true and what's not?

Nobody. But I'm going to trust the opinions of people who are experts in their field much more than some comedian.

> or someone that calls a broad swath of the population idiots?

If you trust Joe more than the experts, then well, if the shoe fits...

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#390

Post by dbingham »

alldayeveryday wrote: post #354
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…

Who benefitted from the mass hirings? Stock holders, and also workers. Did the workers complain when the job market (esp in tech) was on fire and wages were increasing? No. Did they blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? No. But, now they want to blame leaders when there are mass layoffs. I think the blame is misplaced. The root cause was the stock market, and better yet blame the fed. The incentive…

All of these companies laying people off are claiming that they "over hired" or "over extended" themselves during the pandemic and now they need to tighten their belts.

Who made the decision to hire more workers than the company needed? Leadership. Who made the decisions to put the company in a position where it would need to lay people off? Leadership.

Who bears the consequences of those decisions? It's not the people who made them.

It's not like the workers forced the companies to hire them.

This is the problem I have with these layoffs. The leadership who made the strategic decisions that put the company in a position to need to lay people off should face significant economic consequences before anyone else. But that is not happening. That never happens.

And this also is where I push back on people who say that investors are the ones taking the risk (and should therefor reap the rewards of business). It's the workers who take a greater risk - because they have less information, less power, and less of a buffer if something goes wrong.

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