Spotify to cut workforce by 6 percent-Report

At a time when tech companies are laying off employees, Spotify Technology SA is also going to join the list of such companies as it is planning layoffs as soon as this week to cut costs, according to a Bloomberg report quoting people familiar with the plans. It added that the number of positions to be eliminated was not specified by the people.

Spotify has about 9,800 employees. In October, the music-streaming giant laid off 38 staff from its Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studios.

Among those companies that have announced layoffs are Twitter, Meta, Disney, Microsoft and Amazon. In the recent financial results, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and others missed estimates.

Amazon has laid off 18,000 employees, the most, followed by Meta (11,000), Microsoft (10,000), Salesforce (8,000), HP (6,000), Twitter (3,700), and Seagate (3,000). Google has also announced to lay off 12,000 employees.

Spotify made a massive commitment to podcasting beginning in 2019. The company spent over a billion dollars on acquiring podcast networks, creation software, a hosting service and the rights to popular shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and Armchair Expert, according to Bloomberg.

Last week, Microsoft also announced that it would sack 10,000 employees — almost five per cent of its total workforce — in the days to come amid concerns over a global economic downturn. The job cuts were “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities," the maker of the Windows operating system said in a US regulatory filing. Microsoft is the latest to cut jobs after Facebook and Amazon as the bloodbath in the tech sector, which began last year, continues into 2023.

Amazon also recently announced it will cut more than 18,000 jobs from its workforce, citing “the uncertain economy" and the fact that the online retail giant had “hired rapidly" during the pandemic. “Between the reductions we made in November and the ones we’re sharing today, we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles," said CEO Andy Jassy in a statement to his staff. The company had announced 10,000 layoffs in November.