Spotify boss who Signed Harry and Meghan podcast Quits as Streaming Giant cuts 600

Jobs in technology, more update on the Spotify story, Spotify executive who signed up harry and Meghan in a multi-million-pound podcast deal is leaving as the company slashes hundreds of jobs.

chief content officer dawn ostroff was driving the streaming business’s move into podcasts. she secured the duke and duchess of Sussex’s archetypes series in a deal that was thought to be worth £ 20 million, but announcing around 600 job cuts and a management shake-up, chief executive Daniel Ek said yesterday Ostroff has ‘decided to depart Spotify.

The group employs almost 10,000 staff worldwide, with around 671 in the UK. The company said cost-cutting efforts in recent months had failed to shift the dial and more drastic changes were needed to boost business, including ‘fundamentally changing how we operate at the top’.

The company said Ostroff helped expand the podcast content by 40 times, signing major contracts with Harry and Meghan and the Obamas. but this shift to podcast and content investment has come at a cost as the firm racked up losses of £ 130 million in the nine months to September 30.

The growing pressure on consumer spending and a broader tech sell-off has also hurt Spotify’s stock. Shares are down more than 70% from their peak in February 2021, eroding the company’s value by over £40 billion.

Read also – Spotify To Axe 6% Of Its Workforce

Spotify’s employment losses, according to Alice Enders, head of research at Enders Analysis, are “inevitable” for a business that depends so largely on advertising.

Since more than half of Spotify’s 456 million monthly users listen for free, any decline in worldwide advertising is expected to have a significant impact on the service.

The same advertising pressure has led to significant job losses recently at Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook-owned Meta.

Paolo Pescatore, a tech analyst at PP Foresight, claimed that layoffs are simply “the flavor of the month” for internet companies. Amazon.

Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet have both announced layoffs just this month. According to the data website Layoffs. over 55,000 people have lost their employment at tech companies so far in 2023, bringing the total number of job losses since the beginning of 2021 to well over 200,000.