Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much "work around the work" as he laid off 17% of the group's workforce in December.
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.
Yeah. I noticed all my [REALLY SMART] friends were shilling spotify and amazon prime like crazy back in the day. Meanwhile I've just been using Pandora for over a decade without spending any money. If I want to stream a specific song, there's youtube. Otherwise, I just download music for free using my brain.
I really think it's the result of viral marketing more than anyone else.
A lot of live music, a lot of indie music, and in some cases a lot of surprisingly popular music.
In the end, I never bought into any service. I am willing to donate to Soma FM for my work day music streaming, and for everything else I simply host it myself.
I doubt they will return with anything specific or it will be something EXTREMELY niche, local band type stuff. Spotify has an extremely broad range of music. There are a few notable exceptions are Garth Brooks (where are the bodies Garth?!) and Neil Young.
lossless audio - higher quality than mp3, though it's arguable that few if any people could actually tell a difference between a high quality mp3 and a good flac version of the same audio
They actually offer an inferior platform compared to other music streaming services.
You can get way more stuff on SoundCloud for a similar price, or way better audio quality on Deezer or Amazon/Apple music, for a mark up. It's honesty kindaastonishing just his popular Spotify is compared to what they offer...