Spotify cutting hundreds of jobs in latest round of tech layoffs

Music streaming service Spotify announced Monday that it is slashing hundreds of jobs in the latest round of layoffs in the tech sector.

Spotify said it would cut 6 percent of its staff, or about 600 workers, based on its last earnings report.

“Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a statement. 

Ek announced the job cuts along with a handful of other changes to the business, including how its products and business teams are organized.

Spotify’s head of content and advertising Dawn Ostroff is also stepping away from the company and will take on a senior adviser position to help with the changes.

“In almost all respects, we accomplished what we set out to do in 2022 and our overall business continues to perform nicely. But 2023 marks a new chapter. It’s my belief that because of these tough decisions, we will be better positioned for the future,” Ek said.

Ek said one-on-one conversations will take place with all employees affected by the job cuts, and employees are set to receive an average of five months of severance pay.

Spotify becomes the latest company to ax staff in a surge of recent job cuts in the tech sector.

Google announced last week that it would lay off 6 percent of its staff, or 12,000 workers, and Microsoft said it plans to lay off 5 percent of its staff, or 10,000 employees.