Spotify could be the next big company to have mass layoffs

An insider has leaked that Spotify may become the next major technology company to cut jobs. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Swedish audio streaming giant has discussed lowering its operational expenses since last summer. At the outfit’s investor day in June 2022, CEO Daniel Ek informed its estimated 9800 employees that the company would decrease new hires by 25 percent over the next several quarters.

Chief financial officer Paul Vogel explained that the reassessment of employee growth was due to “increasing uncertainty in the global market.”

At the moment, the number of jobs Spotify will cut is unclear. Other tech companies like Meta, Twitter, Amazon, and Microsoft have laid off thousands of employees over the past months. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, recently let go of 12,000 workers.

Spotify previously cut jobs in October 2022, announcing 38 redundancies at its in-house podcast studios, Parcast and Gimlet.

According to Spotify’s third-quarter update, it gained millions more paid subscribers and saw a 21 percent increase in revenue, raking in €3.04 billion in earnings. Ek acknowledged that the company was unaffected by contractions in the economy. However, he still felt that a more conservative business strategy makes more sense for Spotify in the current financial climate.

Spotify was founded in Stockholm by Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006. According to its third-quarter update, the audio streaming service has an eye-popping 456 million users. It also launched its audiobook feature in the US market and the acquisition of Heardle, a trivia game, and Kinzen, an online safety company. 

Spotify is tight-lipped about the leak of the pending layoffs. In the meantime, users are still basking in the afterglow of their annual Spotify Wrapped, and the company is focusing on publishing its fourth-quarter update on January 31, 2023.