Spotify's most recent layoffs target the company's podcast enterprise

Spotify is laying off 200 staff in its podcast division. The downsizing, announced on Monday (June five), impacts roughly two% of the streaming service’s in-particular person workforce.

Paulina Porizkova on method to Instagram

Sahar Elhabashi, the head of Spotify’s podcast enterprise, announced the cuts on the company’s web site, saying they reflect modifications to its connection with podcasters contracted to make original content material.

Elhabashi added that the staffing modifications would occur on Monday, with impacted staff supported by “generous” severance packages and extended healthcare coverage. Spotify previously announced layoffs in January, citing shifts in spending priorities.

Spotify went all in on podcasts. Is it functioning?

Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder and CEO, declared in 2019 that podcasts had been the future of the company’s income stream.

More than the subsequent 3 years, Spotify reportedly invested much more than $1 billion in podcast production and improvement, which includes exclusive audio rights to podcasts made by Prince Harry, Kim Kardashian, and former US president Barack Obama.

The enterprise also bought numerous podcast powerhouses. Amongst them: Gimlet Media—owner of the mega-common Reply All podcast—for $340 million and The Ringer—founded by legendary sports journalist Bill Simmons—for just about $200 million. As nicely, Spotify purchased the rights to Joe Rogan’s standalone podcast for much more than $200 million.

Even so, it remains to be noticed if this investment is paying off. Regardless of adding 83 million month-to-month customers final year, Spotify reported a net income loss of €430 million ($461 million), a ten occasions larger than in 2021, mainly due to an improve in operating costs.

Though the enterprise hasn’t announced the income from its podcast division for 2022, the medium only brought in about $215 million in 2021, which means that podcasts accounted for much less than two% of its $12.four billion in income that year.

Spotify’s podcast investment, by the digits:

#1: Spotify’s rank amongst podcast publishers in the US.

one hundred million: Podcast listeners on Spotify. The enterprise reported 515 million month-to-month customers in the initial fiscal quarter of 2023.

five million: Podcast shows accessible to stream on Spotify.

Current layoffs in Significant Tech:

March 31: Netflix confirms it plans to lay off an unspecified quantity of staff.

April three: Apple, 1 of the final holdouts in the business trend, announces it will lay off a little quantity of staff on its corporate retail teams.

April 27: Dropbox, the information storage enterprise, announces it is laying off 500 staff, or 16% of its employees.

Might four: E-commerce giant Shopify announces it is laying off ten% of its workforce, or about 1,000 people today.

Might 9: Linkedin announces it is cutting 716 jobs and plans to shutter InCareer, its standalone China workforce app.

Might 12: Nuro, an autonomous delivery robot startup, announces it will lay off a third of its workforce and pivot away from industrial operations, focusing as an alternative on analysis and improvement.

Might 24: Meta announces six,000 layoffs, developing on earlier downsizing as aspect of its so-referred to as “year of efficiency.”