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Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant’s operations

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 @Zerlyna for the paywall-free link: archive.ph/wdyDS

Smoogs ,

HAHAHA I’m so glad I was one of them customers that stopped subscribing right at that parabolic curve. Eat it you nasty Joe rogan loving Covid denying fucking dirtbags. you fucking deserve it.

T00l_shed ,

Yup I canceled my sub when they went exclusive with Joe Rogan. I’m not spending a penny to support that douche canoe.

exanime ,

Same… not super proud of switching over to YTM but definitely better than throwing money at Joe Rogan through Spotify.

As with video streaming services, after a couple of great years during which I practically gave up self-hosted pirated content now I find myself going back to it as the servers enshitified beyond my tolerance… YTM is my last ditch attempt

T00l_shed ,

We ended up buying a bluray player and buy movies from thrift stores because fuck the noise that is streaming services now.

Emerald ,

Stop being so canoe-phobic. Canoe’s make for a great outdoor activity

T00l_shed ,

No fuck canoes! Kayak superiority!

intensely_human ,

Why don’t you like Joe Rogan?

T00l_shed ,

Well he is a vaccine skeptic for one. And perhaps I don’t hate Joe himself but his platform is full of misinformation that is taken at face value. He has guests on the show that people take as experts when they aren’t. His dude-bro audience takes what he says as gospel and just makes things worse.

intensely_human ,

What specific misinformation are you referring to?

T00l_shed ,

Covid misinformation for example.

intensely_human ,

That’s an entire category, not what I meant by specific. What specific claims about covid were made on his show that you believe are false?

T00l_shed ,

He took horse de-wormer.

towerful ,

I have finally stopped using Spotify.
Now using TIDAL and absolutely loving it. It’s like what Spotify used to be, loads of great recommendations, much better audio quality, a bit cheaper, and I believe the artists get a better cut.
It’s too good to last, but I’m going to enjoy it while it does

madcat451 ,
@madcat451@lemmy.world avatar

How does their catalog compare?

UckyBon ,

Both are way smaller than Slsk’s.

SidewaysHighways ,

Hello friend

prongs ,

Slsk /Winamp for life. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Rai ,

I was in the Winamp to foobar pipeline in the 00s and I have zero ragrets

I still SLSK but mostly I OPH now.

towerful ,

I haven’t had any issues, but maybe I’m too mainstream

Vibi ,

I absolutely love Tidal as well. Was a long time Spotify subscriber, but their UI/UX decisions, especially for their desktop client, finally frustrated me enough to switch. Had almost no issues moving my playlists over, have a shuffle which actually shuffles, still have daily recommendation playlists, and my favorite part -patch notes; I know what’s happening and why. They actually listen to user feedback and make updates based on it.

EmpathicVagrant ,

frantically taking notes— anyone not Spotify

lath ,

A portion of those is likely something in the vein of “So the ceiling is 1499 employees…Noted.”

b3an ,
@b3an@lemmy.world avatar

How did you migrate your playlists?

Vibi ,

When I signed up they had a very easy process which allowed migration of playlists. I believe it was a 3rd party utility/website which you could actually use to migrate playlists from and to any of the music streaming services.

b3an ,
@b3an@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you!

LanternEverywhere ,

If i wasn't getting spotify premium for free then I'd seriously look into getting Tidal.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works avatar

I saw Spotify sent out an email for another fee hike yesterday. When I opened the app, it was showing me some garbage for an AI playlist generator and the email mentioned they needed more money to pay for amazing new features, the new AI system was no better than the previous system so I figured wtf do they need it for.

After 15 years of being a paid member, I’m going to wrap it up and go back to piracy.

Thassodar ,

I’m on the same track although I distribute my music there, so I wonder if unsubbing will affect that. I’m not subbed to the other platforms that have my music, so I don’t see why it would.

Because they have a huge market share, though, it’s easier to tell people check me out on Spotify than Tidal/Deezer/Bandcamp or whatever because the average Joe doesn’t know what those are.

DerArzt ,

Just took a look at their pricing. Immediately comparable with Spotify (same price for both individual and family). Looks like I’m trying a new streaming service!

Quazatron ,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

Don’t forget there are services around that will copy your playlists from one service to another.

FontMasterFlex ,

such as?

YurkshireLad ,

Does Tidal let family members live at different addresses or do they restrict a family to one house?

towerful ,

I have no idea. Everyone else I know is on Spotify

be_gt ,

Tidal has a family plan, 6 logins and not a care in the world where they are

YurkshireLad ,

Good to know, thanks!

soEZ ,

Switched to tidal as got fedup with Spotify shit app quality, constant breaking when usieng Android auto, and glitching out when playing between pc/android. Tidal is better but missing things. My wife loves alexa integration…so she sticking with Spotify. I am enjoying tidal though. It just works evey time. Its clear why it stops playinga song, and so on. I would rather miss featurs then use buggy product. Spotify is full of random featurs and crap but its buggier then ever…

One other stark difference is the qulaity of of mixes and radio stations tidal puts together…spotify plays same stuff on loop basically, i rarely got anything good thats new and not promoted artist…with tidal i get a huge mix of artists in mymixes and radios, both new and old stuff…its been better for discovery then Spotify.

Quazatron ,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been using Tidal for a long time, and it has only gotten better.

They recently upgraded all tiers to high quality (better than CD) quality for free.

Meanwhile Spotify still doesn’t have the high quality audio tier they promised a few years ago.

18_24_61_b_17_17_4 ,
@18_24_61_b_17_17_4@lemmy.world avatar

Odd that it says $10.99 for individual plan on the website but $12.99 when you download the app.

skarn ,

I expect that’s due to the 30% cut taken on subscriptions purchased through the app store

Natanael ,

It’s because when you buy it via the app store then the app store takes a cut

bsides ,

If that’s the argument, that’s not even the right price. It should be $15.70, because 15.70 - 30% = 10.99. They are losing money if they keep doing math wrong. Looks like they just put 30% above 10 (which isn’t 10.99 by the way) and ran with it.

Best of luck!

buddascrayon ,

I have been using and will continue to use Pandora. I pay five bucks a month for no commercials it continually sends me music that I like to listen to and I have had little to no problems with it since I first signed up. While currently everyone I know who uses Spotify does nothing but complain about how their playlists keep playing them stuff they don’t want or have previously disliked.

assembly ,

I dropped Spotify during that whole Joe Rogan thing but I had been a long time subscriber. I moved to Apple Music which is super buggy and has what appears to be zero interest in playing music I actually like. From your comment, I’ll give Tidal a shot.

SacrificedBeans ,

Oh, I wasn’t aware of that.

For the last couple of years I’ve been “flirting” with Spotify. It would offer me 3 months of premium for the price of one, I would take it and cancel immediately so I don’t forget.

Then lived the happy pirate life for six months or so, and Spotify would come in with the offer. Last time the price was higher but I said what the hell…

Now with this post I was about to uninstall, but I read some comments about services that transfer your playlists, so first things first :))

Nelots ,

I’ve just used modded Spotify clients that give me premium for free for a long while now. Not sure if iPhones have an option like this, but there is an option on both Android and Windows.

kirk781 ,

Yes, but those modded clients still do not have 320 kbps streaming, I think since that is server sided. Plus, if someone wants to use 3rd party apps Spotify apps like ncspot, one needs a Premium subscription.

SacrificedBeans ,

That’s cool, I’m on Android and PC. But I don’t think I’ll go that way. I want to let Spotify die after these more than red flags.

Nelots ,

Understandable, but I’ll be real, I don’t see it ever happening in our lifetime. Much like YouTube, nothing they do seems to cause them any meaningful backlash. The CEO could come over and personally shit in somebody’s food, and they would probably continue paying for premium.

SacrificedBeans ,

Of course this is true. But I don’t think corporations die that way. More likely they will keep going with this culture, firing more/getting fewer employees, their product will get shittier and shitter, and more competition will fill the gaps, until they fight with one for the monopoly.

All this somewhere near the unsuspecting pirates 😅

KillingTimeItself ,

i’ve just been using the “audio file” strategy for the last few years.

No fuss, no problems, only my idiocy and shenanigans cause problems. It’s great. Sometimes metadata is just bunk though, that’s kind of annoying.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I just use YouTube. It has pretty much all the music I want and a lot more that I don’t.

SacrificedBeans ,

I use YouTube too. But I’m not satisfied with the recommendation system - at all.

afraid_of_zombies ,

You don’t like being suggested a near Nazi level conservative “comedian” when you just wanted to listen to Taylor Swift?

KillingTimeItself ,

yeah maybe if this dumbass ran his own publishing house he would be making some fucking money.

Shitposting aside, publishing industries pull in literally billions a year. They’re the ones pushing music to spotify. Spotify makes almost no money, ever. Artists barely make money.

Spotify, if you’re reading this, god i hope not, let artists self publish.

redlue ,

Spotify makes almost no money, ever.

Lol, what? What about the engineers getting 6-figure salaries?

What about everyone else who makes $50k/year?

That’s not making any money? Or are you talking about profit, which is excess?

nomous ,

Spotify made almost 4 billion dollars last year. I wouldn’t call that no money. I agree with everything else though.

KillingTimeItself ,

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 ,

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.

KillingTimeItself ,

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.

Blackmist ,

Wow, who knew they were all people doing something, rather than suckling on your precious Wealth Creator teat?

Here’s another money saving suggestion, go without fire extinguishers and alarms. They’re sitting around doing nothing all day!

westyvw ,

I am somewhat happy I never joined spotify.

Seems like a monopoly that everyone belongs too. Yet they never really had the music I was after anyways.

redlue ,

Yeah. I noticed all my [REALLY SMART] friends were shilling spotify and amazon prime like crazy back in the day. Meanwhile I’ve just been using Pandora for over a decade without spending any money. If I want to stream a specific song, there’s youtube. Otherwise, I just download music for free using my brain.

I really think it’s the result of viral marketing more than anyone else.

PalmTreeIsBestTree ,

It’s why I sub to YouTube premium. I can get any song to ever exist on there.

Zink ,

Yeah, as shitty as YouTube has been to their free users, YouTube music has had every song we’ve ever looked for.

Dkarma ,

Pandora usually plays the song I want anyway

TIMMAY ,

Anyone know a good service I can switch to instead? (Besides fkn youtube services?)

dutchkimble ,

I’m pretty happy with Tidal

explodicle ,

I still download MP3s

noxy ,
@noxy@yiffit.net avatar

you monster! how dare you!

…download flac files instead!

TIMMAY ,

what are flac files?

noxy ,
@noxy@yiffit.net avatar

lossless audio - higher quality than mp3, though it’s arguable that few if any people could actually tell a difference between a high quality mp3 and a good flac version of the same audio

zaphod ,

Wouldn’t call them a monopoly, at least not for music as there are alternatives.

FontMasterFlex ,

what music don’t they have that you’re after??? i dont think i’ve ever NOT found something i was looking for on Spotify.

westyvw ,

A lot of live music, a lot of indie music, and in some cases a lot of surprisingly popular music.

In the end, I never bought into any service. I am willing to donate to Soma FM for my work day music streaming, and for everything else I simply host it myself.

intensely_human ,

Anything specific?

FontMasterFlex ,

I doubt they will return with anything specific or it will be something EXTREMELY niche, local band type stuff. Spotify has an extremely broad range of music. There are a few notable exceptions are Garth Brooks (where are the bodies Garth?!) and Neil Young.

Caitlyynn ,
@Caitlyynn@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

They actually offer an inferior platform compared to other music streaming services. You can get way more stuff on SoundCloud for a similar price, or way better audio quality on Deezer or Amazon/Apple music, for a mark up. It’s honesty kindaastonishing just his popular Spotify is compared to what they offer…

nytrixus ,

Meanwhile, same CEO goes and renews Joe Rogan’s contract for like $250 Million.

Solved the problem for you, Daniel.

EatATaco ,

Not really because it’s not like they are handing that contract to him out of charity, they know he is a huge draw and so if they don’t keep him on, they lose subscribers (and not growing enough was the reason they gave for the layoffs, so losing subscribers because they lose Joe rogan would only exacerbate the reasons for the layoffs).

But I understand that this is about virtual signalling the safe opinion that you hate Joe rogan, and has nothing to do with critically thinking about this.

intensely_human ,

Virtue signaling is so lame. I wonder if people even realize the cost they’re incurring to themselves when they always say the safe thing.

nytrixus ,

Nothing about virtue signaling, you rogan dick sucking fanboy.

How would you feel if you worked for Spotify and your job got axed because some dude your company decided to pay loads to, got more money and suddenly there had to be cutbacks? I bet you’d love that. I bet you’d love the idea of being homeless, no food on the table because you feel that guy “earned it” when you know they probably didn’t in any way. That’s how much of a cuck that you are.

I haven’t listened to a minute or second of Joe Rogan in my life. What I see on the table here and what I’ve read in this article, tells me it’s wrong just by default. Must be nice living such a delusional life like yours over there. I bet you’re the kind of person that voted Trump “CUZ DUH POPULAR VOTE SAID MORE THAN ELECTORAL HUHUHUHU!”

EatATaco ,

Nothing about virtue signaling, you rogan dick sucking fanboy.

You’re level of critical thought is so low that you think recognizing that he is popular is the same as liking him. You can’t possibly imagine a non black and white world where someone would disagree with your mindless position, but at the same time not be a fan of rogan. I personally think the guy is a dope.

But, of course, your position is indefendible, so all you have is childish personal attacks…so.you took a shot in the dark as to what type of person I am…and missed embarrassingly.

Suavevillain ,
@Suavevillain@lemmy.world avatar

People keep trying to paint every CEO as this smart and hardworking class of people. We continue to see it isn’t true.

linearchaos ,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

There are a lot of smart hardworking CEOs. But none of them ever seem to get to this level. At some line in the sand CEOs just become idiots playing chess (poorly) from their yachts.

Good leaders that care about their company seem to universally get pushed out at IPO.

orrk ,

well ya, the very nature of the shareholder system demands short term profits, the rug pull has become the industry norm, dismantle the company to make your numbers seem better, inflating value, and sell before it collapses, find your next victim “investment opportunity” and repeat

zaphod ,

Good CEOs are bad for short term profits because they’re more interested in keeping their company alive longterm.

jorp ,

Once a company is publicly traded it can easily pervert the incentives so that the goal of the CEO becomes to enrich the investors as quickly as possible even at the expense of long term benefit, because stock price and investor satisfaction become the factors contributing most to executive compensation. A CEO who doesn’t care about maximizing their own compensation in favor of employee welfare or company long term success doesn’t keep the support of investors for very long either.

echodot ,

Or they often leave on their own accord. Eg Steve Wozniak

nytrixus ,

The CEO is just a position that tells everyone that you’ve lied to people, deceived your close ones, pulled off underhanded tactics and more to get to where you are. Now you’re the top of the level shithead who makes money doing fuck all except write or say things for PR clout.

axus ,

Daniel Ek founded the company. He got to where he’s at by having lots of money. He got that money to found Spotify by being hired into other companies which were acquired. You’re describing “Executive Vice Presidents” that were promoted from within.

TankovayaDiviziya ,

People tend to hero worship others who don’t deserve to be.

echodot ,

Who’s doing that? The only people doing that to the CEOs everyone else knows they’re useless.

SolarPunker ,

At that level of wealth, concepts such as meritocracy (if ever it’s a positive term) are meaningless; let us still tell the fairy tale that capitalism rewards the best of us and not the recommended.

fidodo ,

You do have to be hard working to be CEO, there’s just a ton of stuff that needs to be handled around a company at all times. But they are not uniquely smarter or have better decision making skills than other people. A good CEO will understand that they don’t know everything and surround themselves with experts to help them with decision making instead of thinking they know better.

That’s not to say that workers aren’t necessarily equally as hard working, especially when your asshole CEO fires a ton of your coworkers and expects you to pick up the slack.

pseudo ,
@pseudo@jlai.lu avatar

Were is the button refuse cookies ? I can’t find the button refuse cookies.

Grinning ,

Ctrl-W

ChaoticEntropy ,
@ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk avatar

It’s almost like employees are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. Who knew.

Rai ,

“People are PEOPLE? That’s not what I wanna hear…”

mPony ,

/ AI removes Depeche Mode from streaming playlist /

PopShark ,

Words are very unnecessary

ArtVandelay ,
@ArtVandelay@lemmy.world avatar

We refer to them as “human capital”

Olhonestjim ,

"You know; like people. That we own and can dispense with whenever needed. It’s the future!

T00l_shed ,

I prefer to look at them as a renewable resource. There will always be more orphans for the orphan crushing machine.

thatirishguyyy ,
@thatirishguyyy@lemmy.today avatar

Not this guy!

FontMasterFlex ,

I’ve been a spotify premium user for a long time. still pay $11/mo and it comes with Hulu for that price. i don’t like all the added bullshit they’ve put in like the ai dj or whatever, and i don’t like the “stations” but i don’t like those on ANY service as they all pretty much don’t play what i want them to, so i just make my own playlists and shuffle through those. don’t really give a fuck that they paid Joe Rogan, and i think it’s silly if you do. Like Apple doesn’t do shady shit with your money too? or youtube? or tidal? come on. gtfoh with that ignorant shit.

TheCoralReefsAreDying69 ,

What an incredible website. Use of page you go to read their privacy policy is blocked by the popup that requires you to accept their privacy policy before continuing to use their site.

Zink ,

I feel for whatever engineer exactly followed management/legal orders to create that.

OneOfTheMicahs , (edited )

What do 10,000 workers do at a company that’s primarily focused on a music streaming app?? I guess it just adds up, but I cannot wrap my head around that many people working on mainly 1 project. Are there just a bunch of behind the scenes projectswI don’t know about? Like what are they all doing 😂

Edit: I think my comment was takenass agreeing with laying off workers. I completely disagree with that! I’m genuinely just curious what they are all doing.

Nomecks ,

It takes a village to run a global highly available service for hundreds of millions of users.

vin ,

WhatsApp was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!

explodicle ,

Hey at least this guy is asking, make him the CEO

WhatsThePoint ,

Gasp - it’s almost like these jet setting CEOs just don’t know that much about their day to day operations. Maybe they should spend less time tongue fucking each other for being “captains of industry” and more time doing the actual job they are paid obscenely for. They are supposed to ensure the company is running properly, not just push up the stock price.

casmael ,

Actually that’s a really good point. Apart from any glaring ethical concerns one might have about this kind of thing, it’s not a terribly good way to run a business. Man do these folk ever like finding a nice new way to shoot themselves in the foot 🤦‍♂️

cybersandwich ,

If you as a CEO who has been running a company, need to fire 1500 people, your resignation should follow that decision or at the very least a few of your c suite and management team need to be removed with them.

Talk about gross mismanagement.

I’d give a new CEO a pass on this tbh. But if you’ve been running the company so poorly that a sizeable chunk of your employees need to be fired youve failed at your job. You should go.

explodicle ,

I’d give a new CEO a pass on this tbh

I wouldn’t. They should either be promoted from upper management and know better, or build their own company and know better. There’s no excuse to manage that many people without experience.

exanime ,

Evidence that these CEOs are more figure heads and actual strategist and absolutely do not deserve the multi-million dollar packages they constantly give themselves

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