Spotify is set to layoff around six per cent of its global workforce, or around 600 staff. It also revealed that Dawn Ostroff, chief content and advertising business officer would leave, as well.
CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a note to employees that while the streaming service had grown with “speed” and that this was the “most defensible” strategy for a business, it had not focused on “efficiency.”
Part of this shift to efficiency required cutting jobs and restructuring the company and cutting 600 staff. Ek said that he took “full accountability” for the decisions that led to the redundancies.
Ostroff’s departure, having spent almost five years at Spotify, will mark a big blow for the company. She will remain as an advisor to Alex Norström, the company’s new chief business office can pick up her role.
Ostroff had focused on expanding Spotify’s podcast offering and its advertising product. She signed Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions to produce exclusive podcasts for the platform, as well as exclusive deals with Kim Kardashian, Joe Rogan, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
“Because of her efforts, Spotify grew our podcast content by 40x, drove significant innovation in the medium and became the leading music and podcast service in many markets,” said Ek.
“These investments in audio offered new opportunities for music and podcast creators and also drove new interest in the potential of Spotify’s audio advertising. Thanks to her work, Spotify was able to innovate on the ads format itself and more than double the revenue of our advertising business to €1.5 billion (around AU$2.32 billion).”
