Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised at negative impact of laying off 1,500 Spotify employees
fortune.com
Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much "work around the work" as he laid off 17% of the group's workforce in December.

When Spotify announced its largest-ever round of layoffs in December, CEO Daniel Ek hailed a new age of efficiency at the streaming giant. But four months on, it seems he and his executives weren’t prepared for how tough filling in for 1,500 axed workers would be.

The music streamer enjoyed record quarterly profits of €168 million ($179 million) in the first three months of 2024, enjoying double-digit revenue growth to €3.6 billion ($3.8 billion) in the process.

However, the company failed to hit its guidance on profitability and monthly active user growth.

Edit: Thanks to @[email protected] for the paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/wdyDS

  • KillingTimeItselfEnglish
    1•7 months ago

    have you checked their historical profits? They’ve lost money on almost every year of their business operation. I don’t think they’ve made net money since being founded. Maybe recently.

    • @nomous
      1•7 months ago

      Spotify’s revenues for 2023 grew 16% year over year, reaching 3.67 billion euros ($4.05 billion), as a surge in both monthly active users (up 23% to 602 million) and premium subscribers (up 15% to 236 million) beat expectations.

      After a third quarter in which the streaming company turned a profit for the first time in a year, however, its operating loss was again in the red, at 75 million euros ($82.7 million), albeit better than its guidance; Spotify says that excluding one-time charges its operating profit would have been 68 million euros ($75 million), more than double the 32 million euros ($34 million) in profit it generated in the third quarter of 2023.

      So 4 billion in revenue, only $75 million in profit.

      These corpos love to pretend they’re not profitable to attract dumb money and VC fucks. Reddit somehow wasn’t profitable but managed to pay their C-suite to the tune of millions.

      • KillingTimeItselfEnglish
        1•7 months ago

        yeah and spotify isn’t profitable because of music publishers. Literally all they would have to do is start publishing in house. And they would pull in way more money.

        VC does nothing but enshittify your platform, and fuck over creators/consumers.