From Bad To Worse: The State Of Spotify And The Streaming Industry
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Streaming juggernaut turns a profit for the first time in a year, celebrates by showing employees the door
December 4, 2023
Spotify, the most popular music streaming platform in the world, today announced a layoff of 1,500 of its employees. It’s their third round of layoffs in 2023. In June they laid off 200 people. In January, 600 got the ax. I wonder if Daniel Ek’s Spotify wrapped (the CEO) has a slide that says “You eliminated 2,200 jobs this year!”. After doing some digging with our dirty claws we found that Twitter user @roshanpatel already made the joke.
Daniel Ek's spotify wrapped pic.twitter.com/JdijuE2ko4
— Roshan Patel (@roshanpateI) December 4, 2023
As an artist on Spotify you can expect to earn $0.003 per stream of your music. As an employee of Spotify, you cannot expect to be secure in your job. But as an investor and shareholder in Spotify, you expect a return on your investment. Which is exactly what investors and shareholders have received this year. As of this writing, Spotify shares on the New York Stock Exchange are up 137% in 2023. Today alone Spotify stock saw an increase of 10% after the mornings layoff announcement.
So how is the digital streaming era of music going at the moment? Well for artists it takes about 500 streams for them to earn enough to buy a Snickers bar. For employees it’s the Hunger Games. But despair not. For the the shareholders, the owners of capital, things are great. We're busy envisioning a post-Spotify future and want to hear from you what that could look like, but for now that’s a wrap!
