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Spotify lays off 6 percent of its employees

Spotify is the latest to engage in a mass layoff, reducing its workforce by 6 percent, or about 600 employees.

TJ Denzer

January 23, 2023 9:05 AM

Image via Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images

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A major and troubling trend throughout various sectors of the tech industry has been mass layoffs throughout the first month of 2023, and Spotify is the latest company in that trend. The music streaming platform announced a major layoff of employees that will reduce its overall workforce by six percent. It is estimated that about 600 workers will be affected by the job cuts.

Spotify officially announced its layoffs with a blog post from CEO Daniel Ek that was also sent out to all employees in a company email beforehand. In his statement, Ek claims the company invested too much, too fast on the back of strong performance and revenue from the years in which the COVID-19 pandemic was at its height.

In addition to the laid off employees, it was also announced that Spotify head of content Dawn Ostroff was leaving the company.

According to the post, laid-off employees will be attended to with a number of measures, including continued health care coverage, immigration support for those who are working in various areas on conditional terms, and five months of severance pay.

Spotify joins a multitude of major tech companies in layoffs as of late. What began with Amazon teasing layoffs at ahead of the holiday season in 2022 (which was confirmed to lead to 18,000 job cuts in 2023) has since included Microsoft laying off 10,000 employees and Google cutting 12,000 jobs, just to name a few.

Spotify’s layoffs are not the largest among the bunch, but it still puts many more employees in the tech industry out of work as various companies attempt to cut costs. Stay tuned as we continue to follow for further stories and updates.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.