8 ms·

Spotify lays off 200 employees, or about 2% of its workforce

88 points by bluedino 3y ago

mikece 3y ago
I find it hard to feel sorry for a company that has somehow found a legal-ish business model based on screwing artists. Their demise cannot come fast enough.
- Sankozi 3y ago
  What? How are they screwing artists? Why are you suggesting they are not legal? Music streaming helped to almost double music industry revenue. https://www.statista.com/chart/4713/global-recorded-music-industry-revenues/ https://www.statista.com/chart/4713/global-recorded-music-in...
  - futurecat 3y ago
    Doubling music industry revenue doesn’t mean doubling artists’ revenues.
    - Sankozi 3y ago
      Yes, but it means problem is somewhere else than Spotify. Especially considering that with Spotify more revenue goes to right holders compared to CD sales.
      - futurecat 3y ago
        Is it true for small artists though?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-19/spotify-artists-royalty-rate-apple-music https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-... > Moreover, notes Werde, within the pie chart detailing the total revenue that Spotify generates through music streaming, “roughly 70% of it is going to rights holders,” he says. The actual recording artists? “They’re keeping anywhere between 5% and a quarter.” The impact on actual album sales likely hits hard, too; I recall an artist on NPR talking about how one CD sale nets them more into their actual pocket than a hundred thousand streams.
    - aetherane 3y ago
      This has always been the case for revenue from recordings.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/743775196/the-success-of-streaming-has-been-great-for-some-but-is-there-a-better-way https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/743775196/the-success-of-stre... > So none of [the royalty system] makes sense... if a song is played on the radio, 100% of the royalties go to the songwriter. But if the same song is played on a streaming service, only about 20% of the royalties go to the songwriter. Where does that come from?"
        paxys 3y ago
        Radio uses public airwaves, and is largely an exception to how the music business works. Not even recording artists get revenue from radio plays, only the songwriters (aka copyright holders).
    - mochomocha 3y ago
      After all this time if Spotify could have found a way to cut off the middlemen, they would have happily done it. From your own quote, you should be mad at Universal & co, not Spotify.
      - 3y ago
  - dilippkumar 3y ago
    The Taylor Swift episode on the Acquired podcast actually does a fantastic job of explaining how this works and why artists barely make money on streaming services - as opposed to radio broadcasts for example.
  - nbaugh1 3y ago
    Industry revenue might be up, but that absolutely does not mean that artists have seen any of it
    - piva00 3y ago
      And that's an issue with the music industry being disproportionately represented by 3 major labels wielding most of the power against the artists, not on distributors.
  - xwowsersx 3y ago
    I'm not arguing that Spotify is screwing artists. I don't know. However, I would just point out that revenue growth in and of itself does not necessarily mean that they are improving the lot of artists. They could 10x revenue, but if profits are being cut in half, as just an example, then this isn't improving artists' business.
- vlunkr 3y ago
  I understand if you don’t like the company or the business model, but I don’t know of anything that qualifies it as “legal-ish”
- piva00 3y ago
  Blame music labels, Spotify tried to propose other models of payment to artists, always blocked by labels with the threat of removing their catalogues in case that goes through. As in any passion-driven industry: artists/creative gets shafted and exploited by middlemen (music labels, game studios/publishers, movie studios, etc.) solely because there's a never-ending stream of passionate individuals that will be exploited to have their creations out in the world.
  - echelon 3y ago
    After Napster fired a warning shot across the bow of the music industry, it was Apple that came to collect [1]. Paying just $0.69 or $0.99 for songs without having to buy a full album represented a tectonic shift. But who needs to buy a song? Spotify (and Pandora, Grooveshark, etc.) brought the same streaming feature from YouTube and Netflix to music. That was even more consumer friendly. [1] https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1413534752699830275 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1413534752699830275
    - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
      Ah Grooveshark. What a place.
luxurytent 3y ago
I'm surprised this is making news. At such a number it feels almost like a typical/seasonal adjustment you see from big tech already. Probably the only reason this is being reported and on HN is due to the existing environment :-) That said, their podcasting play has been poorly executed and I imagine they are losing plenty here with no real profit solution in sight.
- xwowsersx 3y ago
  What exactly was their podcast strategy? Was their plan to buy up a bunch of podcasts and podcast production studios and then eventually pull the plug on publishing those podcasts anywhere else, thereby making them exclusive to Spotify? If so, were they unable to do that? Did they try (I mean making some big podcasts exclusive)?
  - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
    They tried that with Rogan and it didn't go well. Ironically, I don't think the problem was their plan, I think it was that the people that work at Spotify hate people like Rogan and don't want to see him do well. A few execs obviously believe in his content, but the vast majority of Spotify employees I've talked to see him as a dangerous anti-vax transphobe.
    - nerdawson 3y ago
      What leads you to believe it didn't go well? I rarely watch it since the move away from YouTube but as far as I'm aware they haven't released numbers.
      - toyg 3y ago
        Anecdoctical, but Rogan seems way less relevant now he's locked in the Spotify walled garden. It could well be that it's just him running out of steam; the whole galaxy he's effectively part of, has significantly fallen in popularity since the Capitol riot.
wonderwonder 3y ago
Spotify has 8k people? That seems like a lot doesn't it? What do they all do?
- paxys 3y ago
  This comment should just be auto-posted every time there is any mention of employee count on HN. Will save all of us the trouble of beating this horse every time.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    And every time someone does it, and it's a globe-spanning platform, someone should respond quickly by saying well at least some of these people have to deal with 75+ different languages and some of these people have to deal with relationships with 100+ different governments and taxing authorities.
    - piva00 3y ago
      And business relations in each of the markets. Marketing as well, editorial content, so on and so forth. I feel sometimes that a lot of the HN folks work on small-scale companies, releasing MVPs and don't have much of an idea about the operations side of a larger operation. It's easy to think in MVP terms, it's really, really hard to understand the nuances (and costs) that scaling that to hundreds of millions of users across dozens to hundred+ countries entail.
      - no_wizard 3y ago
        I think its the WhatsApp effect, they had all of 55 employees[0] and were bought for 19 Billion USD (cash & stock but still). Never mind that the product that is WhatsApp is fairly unique in how it can be engineered [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/whatsapps-55-employees-are-rich-so-now-what-n34851 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/whatsapps-55-employee...
        3y ago
tylerag 3y ago
Excellent. Maybe they can stop fucking up the UI now. Although the bug that perforates my eardrums when I switch from my laptop to iPhone will probably never get fixed.
- spillguard 3y ago
  Seriously. While I understand that there's a human side to this whole thing, I can't help but hope that whoever was in charge of the recent desktop UI mangling was part of this 2%
- blululu 3y ago
  The UI mangler is probably a “high performer” who is great at slideware engineering. This is their second round of layoffs and I would suggest not kicking the folks who are down today.
  - paddw 3y ago
    "Slideware engineering" is an excellent phrase which I plan to keep. Thank you.
    - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
      Can I have an explanation because I don't understand the joke?
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    Given they backslid on the feed given how badly it went down, and given they had sold the feed to artists (literally, giving them better promotion in exchange for lower royalties was defacto selling advertising space on the screens of "ad free users) which they will now have to unpick probably at a material effect on cost projections, I suspect the product management team are probably not considered high performers at present.
- paxys 3y ago
  It's "excellent" that 200 people lost their jobs?
Despegar 3y ago
The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail as soon as Apple started allowing individual podcasts to monetize directly. That prevented them from rolling up the long tail of the podcast universe as a Spotify exclusive by just paying for the biggest shows. It was a good strategy by Apple. Then you combine the change in the macro environment, and that was the final nail in the coffin. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-podcasts-subscriptions-and-channels-are-now-available-worldwide/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-podcasts-subscr...
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  >The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail as soon as Apple started allowing individual podcasts to monetize directly. Eh, as someone who never listened to the big guys or use Apple's podcasts, I'd hardly give Apple credit. It was just impossible to put podcasts behind a paywall after they were free for a decade. It truly seems like a stupid thing. Reminds me of how one of the satellite radio companies would buy a popular radio host, and that popular radio host would lose their popularity in exchange for millions.
  - Despegar 3y ago
    It could have worked, but only if Apple remained asleep. Paying for big shows like Joe Rogan has given Spotify a large market share in podcasts. Obviously they weren't going to offer upfronts to every single podcast. Their strategy was to bring users in with the biggest shows, and have the rest of the podcasts feel like they have no choice but to move to Spotify to monetize (via their ad-tech).
- Dudester230602 3y ago
  Apple has streaming now?
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail… Except that it didn't. Before Spotify, "podcasting" meant "open medium based on web standards". Spotify embraced/extended/extinguished it to the point that even technical people happily call shows distributed on closed platforms like Spotify and YouTube "podcasts". Since freeing the word "podcasting" from its open, standards-based chains, Spotify now claims to be the largest podcast listening platform with 25% of U.S. listeners. As a closed platform, there's no way to independently verify whether Spotify is cooking their metrics books.
popey 3y ago
While this may be tough on the 200 employees who have been let go, (selfishly) I hope one of them isn't the guy who maintains the Linux desktop client. :S It was always a labo(u)r of love, and never seemed to have widespread support, due to the tiny userbase.
- jmkni 3y ago
  I always assumed the desktop client was built using Electron or something similar, so would be the same for Windows/Linux/macOS, is this not the case?
  - lucsky 3y ago
    The Spotify desktop client is based on Chromium Embedded Framework aka CEF (https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/src/master/), which while awfully similar to Electron, is definitely not Electron.
  - winternett 3y ago
    98% of the time I prefer YouTube (With AdBlock on of course). YouTube in most cases has the actual music videos, and a lot more adventurous (video) content because they can host remixes, which are so much more entertaining than just a bunch of album covers. Spotify also does nothing to promote and pay independent artists, they actually charge most independent musicians (even the ones not making profit) to be displayed on their platform rather than paying royalties, which is a pretty much giant ponzi scheme. YouTube does not pay greatly either in most cases, but it will occasionally promote artists better, and it allows content to be shared on other sites far beyond Spotify's controlling and restrictive attitude towards music content (they don't even really own nor make) hosted on their platform. Spotify's UI is wonky and lacks visual appeal at most times for me. Having to frequently go back to the app to control or change what is playing is quite annoying, it really only needs to be a small scale floating window, as music player tech really hasn't changed dramatically since winamp. Spotify is not a revolutionary company at all, even Soundcloud (still not great to independent musicians either) has had a more visually appealing layout that values artists and the music content more than Spotify, and they've been that way for decades now.

88 points by bluedino 3y ago

I find it hard to feel sorry for a company that has somehow found a legal-ish business model based on screwing artists. Their demise cannot come fast enough.

Sankozi 3y ago
What? How are they screwing artists? Why are you suggesting they are not legal? Music streaming helped to almost double music industry revenue. https://www.statista.com/chart/4713/global-recorded-music-industry-revenues/ https://www.statista.com/chart/4713/global-recorded-music-in...
- futurecat 3y ago
  Doubling music industry revenue doesn’t mean doubling artists’ revenues.
  - Sankozi 3y ago
    Yes, but it means problem is somewhere else than Spotify. Especially considering that with Spotify more revenue goes to right holders compared to CD sales.
    - futurecat 3y ago
      Is it true for small artists though?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-04-19/spotify-artists-royalty-rate-apple-music https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2021-... > Moreover, notes Werde, within the pie chart detailing the total revenue that Spotify generates through music streaming, “roughly 70% of it is going to rights holders,” he says. The actual recording artists? “They’re keeping anywhere between 5% and a quarter.” The impact on actual album sales likely hits hard, too; I recall an artist on NPR talking about how one CD sale nets them more into their actual pocket than a hundred thousand streams.
  - aetherane 3y ago
    This has always been the case for revenue from recordings.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/743775196/the-success-of-streaming-has-been-great-for-some-but-is-there-a-better-way https://www.npr.org/2019/07/22/743775196/the-success-of-stre... > So none of [the royalty system] makes sense... if a song is played on the radio, 100% of the royalties go to the songwriter. But if the same song is played on a streaming service, only about 20% of the royalties go to the songwriter. Where does that come from?"
      - paxys 3y ago
        Radio uses public airwaves, and is largely an exception to how the music business works. Not even recording artists get revenue from radio plays, only the songwriters (aka copyright holders).
  - mochomocha 3y ago
    After all this time if Spotify could have found a way to cut off the middlemen, they would have happily done it. From your own quote, you should be mad at Universal & co, not Spotify.
    - 3y ago
- dilippkumar 3y ago
  The Taylor Swift episode on the Acquired podcast actually does a fantastic job of explaining how this works and why artists barely make money on streaming services - as opposed to radio broadcasts for example.
- nbaugh1 3y ago
  Industry revenue might be up, but that absolutely does not mean that artists have seen any of it
  - piva00 3y ago
    And that's an issue with the music industry being disproportionately represented by 3 major labels wielding most of the power against the artists, not on distributors.
- xwowsersx 3y ago
  I'm not arguing that Spotify is screwing artists. I don't know. However, I would just point out that revenue growth in and of itself does not necessarily mean that they are improving the lot of artists. They could 10x revenue, but if profits are being cut in half, as just an example, then this isn't improving artists' business.
vlunkr 3y ago
I understand if you don’t like the company or the business model, but I don’t know of anything that qualifies it as “legal-ish”
piva00 3y ago
Blame music labels, Spotify tried to propose other models of payment to artists, always blocked by labels with the threat of removing their catalogues in case that goes through. As in any passion-driven industry: artists/creative gets shafted and exploited by middlemen (music labels, game studios/publishers, movie studios, etc.) solely because there's a never-ending stream of passionate individuals that will be exploited to have their creations out in the world.
- echelon 3y ago
  After Napster fired a warning shot across the bow of the music industry, it was Apple that came to collect [1]. Paying just $0.69 or $0.99 for songs without having to buy a full album represented a tectonic shift. But who needs to buy a song? Spotify (and Pandora, Grooveshark, etc.) brought the same streaming feature from YouTube and Netflix to music. That was even more consumer friendly. [1] https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1413534752699830275 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1413534752699830275
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Ah Grooveshark. What a place.

luxurytent 3y ago

I'm surprised this is making news. At such a number it feels almost like a typical/seasonal adjustment you see from big tech already. Probably the only reason this is being reported and on HN is due to the existing environment :-) That said, their podcasting play has been poorly executed and I imagine they are losing plenty here with no real profit solution in sight.

xwowsersx 3y ago
What exactly was their podcast strategy? Was their plan to buy up a bunch of podcasts and podcast production studios and then eventually pull the plug on publishing those podcasts anywhere else, thereby making them exclusive to Spotify? If so, were they unable to do that? Did they try (I mean making some big podcasts exclusive)?
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  They tried that with Rogan and it didn't go well. Ironically, I don't think the problem was their plan, I think it was that the people that work at Spotify hate people like Rogan and don't want to see him do well. A few execs obviously believe in his content, but the vast majority of Spotify employees I've talked to see him as a dangerous anti-vax transphobe.
  - nerdawson 3y ago
    What leads you to believe it didn't go well? I rarely watch it since the move away from YouTube but as far as I'm aware they haven't released numbers.
    - toyg 3y ago
      Anecdoctical, but Rogan seems way less relevant now he's locked in the Spotify walled garden. It could well be that it's just him running out of steam; the whole galaxy he's effectively part of, has significantly fallen in popularity since the Capitol riot.

wonderwonder 3y ago

Spotify has 8k people? That seems like a lot doesn't it? What do they all do?

paxys 3y ago
This comment should just be auto-posted every time there is any mention of employee count on HN. Will save all of us the trouble of beating this horse every time.
- CPLX 3y ago
  And every time someone does it, and it's a globe-spanning platform, someone should respond quickly by saying well at least some of these people have to deal with 75+ different languages and some of these people have to deal with relationships with 100+ different governments and taxing authorities.
  - piva00 3y ago
    And business relations in each of the markets. Marketing as well, editorial content, so on and so forth. I feel sometimes that a lot of the HN folks work on small-scale companies, releasing MVPs and don't have much of an idea about the operations side of a larger operation. It's easy to think in MVP terms, it's really, really hard to understand the nuances (and costs) that scaling that to hundreds of millions of users across dozens to hundred+ countries entail.
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      I think its the WhatsApp effect, they had all of 55 employees[0] and were bought for 19 Billion USD (cash & stock but still). Never mind that the product that is WhatsApp is fairly unique in how it can be engineered [0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/whatsapps-55-employees-are-rich-so-now-what-n34851 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/whatsapps-55-employee...
      - 3y ago

tylerag 3y ago

Excellent. Maybe they can stop fucking up the UI now. Although the bug that perforates my eardrums when I switch from my laptop to iPhone will probably never get fixed.

spillguard 3y ago
Seriously. While I understand that there's a human side to this whole thing, I can't help but hope that whoever was in charge of the recent desktop UI mangling was part of this 2%
blululu 3y ago
The UI mangler is probably a “high performer” who is great at slideware engineering. This is their second round of layoffs and I would suggest not kicking the folks who are down today.
- paddw 3y ago
  "Slideware engineering" is an excellent phrase which I plan to keep. Thank you.
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
    Can I have an explanation because I don't understand the joke?
- Mindwipe 3y ago
  Given they backslid on the feed given how badly it went down, and given they had sold the feed to artists (literally, giving them better promotion in exchange for lower royalties was defacto selling advertising space on the screens of "ad free users) which they will now have to unpick probably at a material effect on cost projections, I suspect the product management team are probably not considered high performers at present.
paxys 3y ago
It's "excellent" that 200 people lost their jobs?

Despegar 3y ago

The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail as soon as Apple started allowing individual podcasts to monetize directly. That prevented them from rolling up the long tail of the podcast universe as a Spotify exclusive by just paying for the biggest shows. It was a good strategy by Apple. Then you combine the change in the macro environment, and that was the final nail in the coffin. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-podcasts-subscriptions-and-channels-are-now-available-worldwide/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/06/apple-podcasts-subscr...

hospitalJail 3y ago
>The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail as soon as Apple started allowing individual podcasts to monetize directly. Eh, as someone who never listened to the big guys or use Apple's podcasts, I'd hardly give Apple credit. It was just impossible to put podcasts behind a paywall after they were free for a decade. It truly seems like a stupid thing. Reminds me of how one of the satellite radio companies would buy a popular radio host, and that popular radio host would lose their popularity in exchange for millions.
- Despegar 3y ago
  It could have worked, but only if Apple remained asleep. Paying for big shows like Joe Rogan has given Spotify a large market share in podcasts. Obviously they weren't going to offer upfronts to every single podcast. Their strategy was to bring users in with the biggest shows, and have the rest of the podcasts feel like they have no choice but to move to Spotify to monetize (via their ad-tech).
Dudester230602 3y ago
Apple has streaming now?
CharlesW 3y ago
> The podcasting initiative was doomed to fail… Except that it didn't. Before Spotify, "podcasting" meant "open medium based on web standards". Spotify embraced/extended/extinguished it to the point that even technical people happily call shows distributed on closed platforms like Spotify and YouTube "podcasts". Since freeing the word "podcasting" from its open, standards-based chains, Spotify now claims to be the largest podcast listening platform with 25% of U.S. listeners. As a closed platform, there's no way to independently verify whether Spotify is cooking their metrics books.

popey 3y ago

While this may be tough on the 200 employees who have been let go, (selfishly) I hope one of them isn't the guy who maintains the Linux desktop client. :S It was always a labo(u)r of love, and never seemed to have widespread support, due to the tiny userbase.

jmkni 3y ago
I always assumed the desktop client was built using Electron or something similar, so would be the same for Windows/Linux/macOS, is this not the case?
- lucsky 3y ago
  The Spotify desktop client is based on Chromium Embedded Framework aka CEF (https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/src/master/), which while awfully similar to Electron, is definitely not Electron.
- winternett 3y ago
  98% of the time I prefer YouTube (With AdBlock on of course). YouTube in most cases has the actual music videos, and a lot more adventurous (video) content because they can host remixes, which are so much more entertaining than just a bunch of album covers. Spotify also does nothing to promote and pay independent artists, they actually charge most independent musicians (even the ones not making profit) to be displayed on their platform rather than paying royalties, which is a pretty much giant ponzi scheme. YouTube does not pay greatly either in most cases, but it will occasionally promote artists better, and it allows content to be shared on other sites far beyond Spotify's controlling and restrictive attitude towards music content (they don't even really own nor make) hosted on their platform. Spotify's UI is wonky and lacks visual appeal at most times for me. Having to frequently go back to the app to control or change what is playing is quite annoying, it really only needs to be a small scale floating window, as music player tech really hasn't changed dramatically since winamp. Spotify is not a revolutionary company at all, even Soundcloud (still not great to independent musicians either) has had a more visually appealing layout that values artists and the music content more than Spotify, and they've been that way for decades now.