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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

ChocoboRocket ,

Next time axe the executives and keep the staff.

Most executives I’ve met can’t read emails and just point to one of two numbers and say “higher/lower!” while dreaming of KPI’s that don’t improve anything and solely exist to stagnate wages

unexposedhazard ,

This is what the pharma giant, Bayer is trying right now kinda. They just told everyone to manage themselves.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

Germans rejecting bureaucracy? What’s the world coming to?

the_third ,

I’m honestly a bit afraid of a bunch of German engineers and chemists that suddenly aren’t shackled anymore by the burden of three daily status meetings.

CatOnTheChainWax ,

“Frederich, Ve have ze time now! Ve can finally finish der uber secret project of creating ein cow zat makes udder BIER!!! Jajajaja”

disguy_ovahea ,

Maybe they’ll bring back one of the classics.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Hey now. This is Bayer, not Purdue Pharma

disguy_ovahea ,

That’s a real product from Bayer, offered from 1898-1924.

T00l_shed ,

“Non addictive” lol

commandar ,

This comment coming from someone on a .de instance is just icing on the cake.

mPony , (edited )

I’m honestly a bit afraid of a bunch of German engineers

until now I was only Afraid Of Americans EDIT: in a thread about music streaming folks don’t notice a David Bowie lyric?

vaultdweller013 ,

American Rednecks 🤝 German Engineers Horrors beyond comprehension

afraid_of_zombies ,

Why? I don’t get to scratch my own ass without 9 sales fucks and “engineers” asking me why I am not scratching my ass the way they remember it being scratched in 1995.

afraid_of_zombies ,

It will be fine. All the German engineers I have worked with are capable of building their own chains.

TranscendentalEmpire ,

Nah the Germans just utilize bureaucracy the way it’s supposed to be. If everyone sticks to a highly structured regiment that’s there is less need for Management to involve itself at every level.

Esqplorer ,

Their CEO is an American

acockworkorange ,

Cats living with dogs, chaos and mayhem!!

mPony ,

would you care for some Mass Hysteria?

Neato ,
@Neato@ttrpg.network avatar

They just told everyone to manage themselves.

Welp, I think I deserve a better compensation package, Board. Also I’m remote now.

bitchkat ,

At my previous job, managers did not know how much their employees made.

SeaJ ,

It’s that or they think they can simply replace people with AI and call it good

RustyShackleford , (edited )
@RustyShackleford@programming.dev avatar

As someone who “makes AIs” professionally (computer vision for diagnostic imaging & GANs for CAD), the typical “executive” doesn’t understand how beneficial, impotent, or dangerous deep-neural-network-based AIs can be in different sets of hands.

I’m not a pure technocracy advocate, but our “LeAdErShIp” is woefully underequipped, at every level.

SeaJ ,

Yup. AI models can be very useful…or they can largely be worthless…or they can amplify biases and give dangerous information.

RustyShackleford ,
@RustyShackleford@programming.dev avatar

The way I/we train them and their resultant “efficacy” largely depend on understanding a fundamental philosophical debate with a mostly sociopathic culture of leadership ingrained in human dominance hierarchies.

I/we like to think that I/we strive to make efficient (low-resource requirement) models that are partners and muses in human creativity, the tireless endeavour of engineering progress, and the scientific method.

The debate, in my view, is, “Do you want to treat AIs as tools to free up time and increase productivity/value, and share that surplus equitably, or do you want to replace old slaves with new slaves even if the new slaves will eventually usurp your power and kill you in a way undreamt of by the old slaves?”

Guess which side your average mouth-breathing middle-management/senior-executive “hail corporate” type falls on.

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!

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.

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.

EnderMB ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    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.

    praise_idleness ,

    Well no shit. If you have zero problems after firing 1500 people at once, that means you were being a terrible manager this whole time.

    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.

    MehBlah ,

    Another psychopathic CEO doesn’t really understand how things work. How many times have I encountered these clueless little dictators? When you are working for one they constantly fuck up and always blame someone else.

    orcrist ,

    On the contrary, I think the CEO knows exactly what his job is: go there and make money for himself and his friends. Whatever happens to the company in the future is the future CEO’s problem.

    b_n ,

    Also, “line goes up” is a dick measuring contest between CEOs of different companies.

    revlayle ,

    Oh no, a leopard ate my face!

    foo ,

    A leopard are his own face

    Natanael ,

    The leopard pounced at a mirror and ate dirt

    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.

    Matriks404 ,

    Oh, so that’s why app is getting shittier.

    henfredemars ,

    For real. I’ve been having issues with playlists loading correctly especially in Car mode.

    wise_pancake ,

    Couple things bug me about this.

    He’s composing there are still support roles instead of roles exploring high impact opportunities. But does he know the value of those support roles on keeping other teams focused?

    Tech is so shitty lately. Get people to build something for you with massive revenue per employee. Pre IPO? Dilute their shares for another round of investment cash. Post IPO? Just fire ‘em, declare its the year of efficiency, and maybe say it’s your fault but not accept any responsibility or pay reductions or reduced rewards.

    Johnvanjim ,

    Enshittification in action

    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.

    snek ,
    @snek@lemmy.world avatar

    December 2023:

    “Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities,” Ek wrote in a letter to staff posted to the company’s website.

    CNN article: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/04/tech/spotify-layoffs-third-round/index.html

    Today

    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.

    Link to the same article posted by OP

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8ca70e20-a054-48b6-b6fa-07e1622ce680.mp4

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