According to Bloomberg, Spotify Technology is planning to lay off employees as early as this week to cut costs, after Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and others have recently eliminated thousands of jobs.
In October, Spotify laid off 38 employees from its Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studios. According to its third-quarter results, the music-streaming giant employs around 9,800 people.
The tech company laid off staff last year as the demand boom during the pandemic quickly faded, and the cuts continue this year as companies look to control costs to weather the downturn.
In the past few weeks, Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced it will cut 12,000 jobs, or more than 6 percent of its global workforce, while Microsoft has said it will cut 10,000 jobs and Amazon’s round of layoffs will affect more than 18,000 positions.
Other tech companies such as Facebook parent Meta and Elon Musk’s Twitter laid off thousands of employees at the end of last year.
Spotify is currently one of the world’s largest music streaming service providers and has licenses with the world’s four largest record labels: Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music, Tencent Music Entertainment, and other record labels.
The company has made a huge investment in podcasts starting in 2019. It spent more than $1 billion to acquire podcast networks, creation software, hosting services and the rights to broadcast some popular shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience, Armchair Expert and others.
However, these investments have tested the patience of investors. Spotify executives said in June that its podcast business would be profitable in the next one to two years.
