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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%

#471

Post by nibbleshifter »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #155
eloisant wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saving isn't that obvious because they might need to hire contracters (sometimes even the same worker) to make up for the lost workforce. Also severance packages are expensive! In addition to all the costs associated with a big layoff plan like this one.

Probably more about sending a message to anxious tech-shareholders than anything else. 2023 is not the right year for a tech investment to appear to hemorrhage money.

> Probably more about sending a message to anxious tech-shareholders than anything else.

That's basically the whole deal.

You have to be seen to be cutting costs, to assuage the board and shareholders that you are performing your duty.

Layoffs are an incredibly easy way to do that.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#472

Post by default_png »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #310
default_png wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is though, I have probably thrown 3K into Spotify, If I cant get a "Flat rate subscription for All / Most of the music out there" - > I will 100% just go back to downloading discographies of the artists I like. People saying "Support the artists" - I don't care about the artists, I just want to listen to whatever takes my fancy, and if they can't do that at my price point, they will end up getting nothing from…

how have you spent $3k on Spotify? the company is 17 years old and if you were subscribing from day 1 for $10/month that would only be 2k.

Been using it since I was back at Uni, 2012, and have paid for both myself and another account recently.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#473

Post by default_png »

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…

how long until they start pulling their catalogs?

> Not my concern, I will just rollback to having an offline downloaded library if Spotify / All you can eat music stops being "Easy"

>Will you stop listening to music if/when the unprofitable music streaming services shut down?

No, I will just stop paying for it.

>What happens if/when Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple are barred from tying and bundling their services?

Yarrrrrr

>will simply revert to pay per song/album and legal battles instead of wasting resources on listeners who aren't willing to pay a meaningful amount for music.

Then they get nothing from me..

I think it all rolls back to - > Would they rather have 1 million listens at 0.5P or 1 million listens at 0p.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#474

Post by guntherhermann »

expazl wrote: post #437
fleddr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the tech sector, "taking responsibility" means admitting your decisions led to the situation yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees. In other words, it means nothing. Taking actual responsibility could include stepping down, canceling bonuses, reduced compensation for leadership. It could include steps to become better at forecasting rather than randomly guessing. It could include ironing the busines…

> yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees. If a F1 driver admits his driving led to them loosing the race even though engineering did everything right, it's still the entire team that doesn't get the price. And if the entire team doesn't get enough funds in from their endeavor they might have to carry out layoffs. And you can be sure they'll lay off one of the 40 engineers before they lay off the driver.…

I think this analogy fails in a number of ways, the biggest being that the assumption is the driver has "just started" and fails "one race". Neither are true for the executive in question.

Not only that but the analogy even fails for F1 because there are reserve drivers and an infinite number of people who want to be F1 drivers, there'll never be an "empty seat"

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#475

Post by gadders »

wefarrell wrote: post #79
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.

Netflix doesn't have all films and shows whereas Spotify has pretty much every song. For video I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, Disney plus and Hulu but for music I only have Spotify.

That's fair. Still not sure Spotify's worth £20/month though but I wouldn't describe myself as someone massively into music.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#476

Post by default_png »

ben7799 wrote: post #331
maxwell wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Esp…

>> It seems like most casual listeners just don't understand this

I very much understand it. I just don't care.

There will always be some form of music. I pay my money for it. If they can't get by on some agreement from the record industries, I really don't care.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#477

Post by rpep »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #426
rpep wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have to ‘follow’ the artist by going to their profile and clicking ‘follow’. I much prefer this functionality because liking an album or a song does not mean I want to be exposed to all new music by the artist.

It makes the library a bit useless though. If I'm offline and want to look for a specific artist's music I have downloaded, if I can't remember the name of the album it's not easily findable.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#478

Post by danjac »

juve1996 wrote: post #274
danjac wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weird is that all of these CEOs are saying the same thing: "I hired too many folks a couple years ago, welp, guess I was wrong". You would think some companies hired too many, some hired too few, others more or less just stayed the same. Instead we're seeing this groupthink of these so-called geniuses of the industry moving this way and that like a flock of sheep.

Those CEOs knew what they were doing and what they're doing isn't wrong. Our entire economy is built on short term gain and rewards that. CEOs are worried about their quarterly numbers and are doing layoffs to lessen the blow.

Sure, but then one questions the need of these extremely-well renumerated CEOs. If they are guided purely by quarterly numbers, stock market trends and industry groupthink, then why not save a fortune and replace them wholesale with an AI.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#479

Post by capableweb »

yawnr wrote: post #305
capableweb wrote: post #174

As a long time user of Spotify (almost two decades in a couple of years...), this is my biggest gripe with Spotify: https://i.imgur.com/wfSka2H.png More and more playlists are starting to look like this, which is starting to piss me off. I don't really care if it's the record companies fault or whoever, and I blame 100% myself for getting into this situation in the first place. Started to use Bandcamp more and more l…

Well they’re owned by Epic now, so that may not be up to them anymore.

That did suck big time, makes them less independent. But at least stuff I already bought and downloaded can't disappear overnight, as I have the files on disk and backup already. I learned something from Spotify after all :)

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#480

Post by that_guy_iain »

guntherhermann wrote: post #474
expazl wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees. If a F1 driver admits his driving led to them loosing the race even though engineering did everything right, it's still the entire team that doesn't get the price. And if the entire team doesn't get enough funds in from their endeavor they might have to carry out layoffs. And you can be sure they'll lay off one of the 40 engineers before they lay off the driver.…

I think this analogy fails in a number of ways, the biggest being that the assumption is the driver has "just started" and fails "one race". Neither are true for the executive in question. Not only that but the analogy even fails for F1 because there are reserve drivers and an infinite number of people who want to be F1 drivers, there'll never be an "empty seat"

>Not only that but the analogy even fails for F1 because there are reserve drivers and an infinite number of people who want to be F1 drivers, there'll never be an "empty seat"

Plenty of people wanting to do the job, but how many can actually do the job.

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