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Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

newsroom.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#251

Post by oblio »

hyperbovine wrote: post #220
jorlow wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love a tl;dw. How does he predict the fail will materialize?

I didn't watch either, but judging from the comments, it's the usual story: they are completely beholden to record companies, who own rights to nearly all of their catalog. Thus most of their revenue goes straight back out the door as royalties. Moreover, the recording companies can raise the rates pretty much at-will, which apparently they have done upon seeing Spotify starting to make a bit more money. That is why…

They're trying to be an aggregator but the record companies know this and they're businesses, not consumers, so they just put up an old fashioned cartel against the aggregator.

Turns out, cartel >>> aggregator.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#252

Post by jzb »

TMWNN wrote: post #93
mvdtnz wrote: post #7

I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.

Assuming that investing in Rogan did what Spotify hoped it would (driving enough subscriptions to make a profit), not having made the investment would have meant more layoffs now.

Opposite for me. I cancelled because of that. Partially because I didn’t like Spotify endorsing his content, but also because I subscribed to Spotify for music, not podcasts.

I wanted to see them invest more in features around music and work on better compensation for artists - not spend my subscription money on shoving podcast content at me.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#253

Post by sevagh »

pdimitar wrote: post #125
Maxion wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. This seems to be some megatrend with the big tech companies. Hire on ~10k staff, ignore your core features, ???, profit.

I mean, yeah. How many engineers do you need? 5-6 for the backend, 3-4 DevOps, maybe some more for the various frontends... say, 20? I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. And everyone else, what do they do? Cold calls to the entire planet to go subscribe, or what? Also alright, some lawyers and "compliance" people, financiers, marketers,... Don't know. I'd struggle to…

>I mean, yeah. How many engineers do you need? 5-6 for the backend, 3-4 DevOps, maybe some more for the various frontends... say, 20?

So Spotify should bring you in as the CTO, right? How can you make such a confident claim that you know better how to run the company that has beat the daylights out of every other music streaming platforms (including Google, Amazon, and Apple)?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#254

Post by SiempreViernes »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #219
jorlow wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love a tl;dw. How does he predict the fail will materialize?

Here's what Bard says: "The video starts by talking about how Spotify has become the dominant force in the music industry. In 2018, Spotify had over 200 million users and was paying out over $5 billion in royalties to artists. However, the video also points out that Spotify is not a very profitable company. In fact, Spotify has lost money every year since it was founded in 2006. So, how does Spotify make money? The a…

In their annual report[1] Spotify specify they make about 10 times more revenue from premium than ads, so that's a pretty big blow to their thesis.

[1]: https://s29.q4cdn.com/175625835/files/doc_financials/2022/ar... (p. 51)

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#256

Post by conradfr »

alexpotato wrote: post #231
hyperbovine wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't watch either, but judging from the comments, it's the usual story: they are completely beholden to record companies, who own rights to nearly all of their catalog. Thus most of their revenue goes straight back out the door as royalties. Moreover, the recording companies can raise the rates pretty much at-will, which apparently they have done upon seeing Spotify starting to make a bit more money. That is why…

I'm surprised Spotify wouldn't take this to the next step and, borrowing a page from the old industrialists, try to vertically integrate and start their own music label and talent scouting arm. You would think they could pull a "Netflix and House of Cards" to use all of their play data to find exactly which kind of niche singer/songwriter people would want to hear. They could then use their reach + algorithms to floa…

Do artists want to be signed by a label that will probably limit their exposure to only one streaming service?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#257

Post by myspy »

deelowe wrote: post #236
mahmoudhossam wrote: post #199

This isn't about rising costs though, this is about the labels and shareholders being greedy and wanting an even bigger piece of the cake that is already massive. Meanwhile artists are getting paid next to nothing and now even workers are getting the short end of the stick.

I see this response a lot on these threads. Why is it so hard to accept that two digit inflation over the past couple of years and interest rates well above 5% could be a major factor?

Well how about thinking stakeholders first and shareholders second?

Firing your employees because you are incompetent leadership and management without good foresight should result in letting you go.

Why the high compensation for leadership when it doesn‘t know what it does?

Braun didn‘t get the design leader in the past because they threw out their team, they got there because they kept the team together. The more you learn the better for the company.

This goes for all tech related job cutting in the last months.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#259

Post by kvetching »

baby wrote: post #28
anon23432343 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. I don't get why people listen to him... He is not funny nor smart. It sometimes feels you get better value when watching morning tv shows...

He’s a great podcaster.

He's really gone downhill lately. Looking really rough. And stoned on top of that. I wonder if he can even comprehend half of what his guests are saying.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#260

Post by gumballindie »

hasoleju wrote: post #229
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #202

Looks like Benn Jordan's analysis on how Spotify will fail is slowly starting to materialize: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU

I'm a heavy user of spotify. Almost everyone I know uses it daily. I don't understand why they are not able to turn this much engagement into profit.

> Almost everyone I know uses it daily.

Counterpoint: almost no one I know uses it. It was fun at first but became boring fast, a bit like Netflix. If I want to listen to music I use youtube.

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