Spotify cutting global workforce by six percent

The Verge reports that Ek announced the layoffs to staff today (23 January), and approximately 600 staff members will be affected by the cuts, who are due to be notified later today. Spotify's last earnings report revealed the company had around 9,800 full-time employees. Dawn Ostroff, head of content and ads at Spotify, is also leaving the company.

According to Ek's announcement, he revealed the workforce reduction is part of an organisational restructure aimed at boosting efficiency and minimising costs. He wrote, "As part of this effort, and to bring our costs more in line, we’ve made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our number of employees."

He added, "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."