Spotify passes 500M active users as operating losses deepen
thelocal.se>>> In January, following similar moves by other tech industry giants, the streaming giant announced it was cutting around 600 jobs out of around 10,000.
I would have guessed a total headcount of 2K-3K. Anybody has an idea of the approximate headcount by department ? 10K full time employees seem a lot to me.
There's a rule that when at scale every edge case is a real problem.
There's likely a whole org working on integrations with some oddball apps and devices. They likely make millions from this edge use case since Spotify operates at such scale. There's likely an org that makes small 0.1% improvements to server infra that saves millions. Every possible edge case bug is being hit at their scale. It's worth having extra engineers to tackle those.
Not to mention the shear business complexity of what they do. Billing, paying royalties, advertisers, legal compliance etc.
10k employees. For a huge company that operates across the globe. That seems small.
no trust me i could recreate spotify in my garage with 5 engineers, I mean all they do is play mp3s, how hard could it be.
Then go for it?
It's a hacker news joke. When dropbox was originally announced on hacker news, someone posted that its just rsync and they could implement it in a weekend.
FTP server and a big pipe is all you need
>>> Not to mention the shear business complexity of what they do. Billing, paying royalties, advertisers, legal compliance etc.
Thanks, that was also my guess. Would be interesting to know headcount by department. Hence my question.
It blows my mind that a company can have 500M active users and still somehow lose money.
Anytime Spotify makes money the music labels up their prices. Music streaming is not that great of a business model.
What about the podcast space?
They already invested hundreds of millions on Joe Rogan and can't even develop a half-decent podcast interface.
Maybe they could improve on that front and diversify a bit?
The thinking may have been that they cannot make money from music, but maybe podcasts could be profitable.
Exactly. That's why it's baffling to see them spend, what? 100-200? million dollars just on Joe Rogan, to then spend 0 dollars in podcast UI improvements.
I could imagine taking a Netflix-style approach perhaps, where you fund small-ish podcast producers and see what sticks. Perhaps develop a podcast-specific UI mode. Maybe create a monetization platform for podcasts (similar to Substack) so that you can attract talent and then extract the all-too-familiar XX% in platform fees?
I mean, I'm sure Spotify employees have thought of these things before, it's not like these ideas are revolutionary. But I see nothing that makes my Spotify subscription a must-have.
They will be met with resistance. Podcasts were always free, many even long time listeners will drop podcast instead of paying for it…
Also podcasts were offline by design, I know times change, but still it’s too early…
I too have been perplexed by how second-class podcasts are on there.
Sound spike music licensing is a great business model though!
Cartels and rackets usually make money yes.
Also, see "hollywood accounting".
$200M of that loss went to Joe Rogan.
200m of the 172m loss?
It paid 200m of a 3.5 year deal announced May 2020 in a single quarter?
None of that adds up.
I tried to convince my son to try the spotify premium which is currently 3 months free trial. He said he does not need another service on top of YouTube premium and Apple Music even if it’s free. He’s not wrong. I’m not sure how a music only service can survive on its own- I often switch between videoclips, songs, podcasts with video or not, all on YouTube. Another app/service for just some of these things is not convenient.
If you don't have apple stuff it's pretty obvious choice.
Apple Music does work on android and non-Mac computers
I just use Apple Music. I have no need for Google's Music service.
Google's music service is bundled with YouTube premium. Do you like watching ads on YouTube? I don't. But yeah there's no point in buying multiple music streaming services if you don't have other reasons for the overlap. They all work the same.
It just means I watch YouTube less and less. I used to have Google All Music Access, and they messed up when one of my cards expired and cut my service instead of giving me a grace period, I was grandfathered into YouTube Red or whatever they call it now, but when I had to renew with a new card, I no longer had both, there was no way I was going to pay for YouTube and Google All Music Access both. So as soon as I got my iPhone I got Apple Music and gave up on Google.
Spotifys privacy practices are sketchy. I don’t care if they fail when the execs brag about being able to profile people based on their listening habits
> passes 500M active users
In which direction?