Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

newsroom.spotify.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 1001 posts

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#271

Post by stingraycharles »

4death4 wrote: post #224
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But where is the prediction on how Spotify will fail?

Increasing interest rates.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#272

Post by that_guy_iain »

switch007 wrote: post #244
that_guy_iain wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people will be getting told they're part of it? I would suspect this will be hanging over their heads as an unknown element. Is it even possible for HR to manage off-boarding 17% of the company within a month?

From the article: > Earlier today, CEO Daniel Ek shared the following note about the company’s organizational changes with all Spotify employees. > ... > you will receive a calendar invite within the next two hours from HR for a one-on-one conversation. These meetings will take place before the end of the day on Tuesday

I saw that but I honestly don't think it's possible for HR to handle about 1,500 off-boarding meetings within 2 days.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#273

Post by oblio »

glimshe wrote: post #245
hasoleju wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are likely not charging enough for their costs. A lot of unsustainable businesses are like that. Users love it because of the low prices and high perceived value - think Uber.

Anyone remember Grooveshark? Great service :-D

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#274

Post by selfmodruntime »

glimshe wrote: post #245
hasoleju wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are likely not charging enough for their costs. A lot of unsustainable businesses are like that. Users love it because of the low prices and high perceived value - think Uber.

An alternative viewpoint: Their costs are too high for what they can reasonably charge. Hence the layoffs. They could probably cut half of their workforce.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#275

Post by oblio »

rodlette wrote: post #225

I'm embarrassed to admit that despite having had Spotify for years, my music tastes didn't change much. I switched back to albums, and can thankfully pick clients that suit my taste. * https://gitlab.com/souch/SMP for Android * https://apps.gnome.org/Amberol/ for desktop Linux Beets and rsync manage tags and distribution.

> I'm embarrassed to admit that despite having had Spotify for years, my music tastes didn't change much.

Don't be embarrassed, that's probably most people.

We like what we like.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#276

Post by empiricus »

Meanwhile I cannot see anywhere what is the streaming quality for Spotify on my Samsung TV. Please put a text label somewhere in the currently empty settings page. It should take 1h of programmer time. Granted, if what I suspect is true, i.e. the streaming data rate is too small (not configurable), then I might switch to a different streaming app :)

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#277

Post by user_named »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #222
osobo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what they were all doing. Their special apps, like the iWatch, are below par and they are pretty much the last service that doesn't offer HQ audio. AI does most of the editorial playlist generation. What are nearly 10K people doing?

yea seriosuly.. they're desktop app is electron. its not like their individual apps are getting special attention. imho, I'd pay extra for a good NATIVE spotify client for the mac

No you wouldn't

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#278

Post by COGlory »

WUMBOWUMBO wrote: post #261
deburo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you not aware how dire inflation and the very high interest rate make the current situation?

Hasn't inflation gone down to ~3%?

Has it? Nothing in my life except gasoline has gotten any cheaper.

Edit: I misread the comment. I am aware of the difference between rates and absolutes.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#279

Post by lotsofpulp »

myspy wrote: post #257
deelowe wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

How much more money do you want Spotify to lose?

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn...

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/

https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

Shareholders have a 1.52% return since it went public, Apr 2018. A riskless investment in sp500 earned 11.7% since Apr 2018.

How much more do you want shareholders to lose? They have been losing 10%+ per year for 5.5 years.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#280

Post by oblio »

happytiger wrote: post #155
sigilis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to the technical work of keeping the servers running and the infra reliable, there is probably a great deal of work getting content licensing deals, working on marketing, managing the whole edifice, and stuff like that. They need a huge number of content “suppliers” to get basically every song in every country. They undoubtedly have a large number of developers working on apps for every platform, keeping…

Maybe. But for perspective it’s approximately 1/40th of the number of people that were employed at the peak of the Apollo moon landing missions (400,000 people) and that required the support of over 20,000 firms and universities. It’s a LOT of humans for streaming music service.

Turns out, more people use a streaming music service (and frankly... really care about it), than they do about the Apollo moon landing.

A lot of the main tech achievements are great geek talking points but not where labor is really concentrated.

Humans are vain and shallow, that should probably one of the core things drilled into geek skulls.

Post reply on HN