New Delhi: Spotify is laying off the Spotify 4 team or the Spotify Studios team as it has decided to shut down its namesake podcast studio, the media has reported. Spotify Studios comprised of 10 to 15 employees who produced shows such as Dissect and Chapo: Kingpin on Trial. The employees in question were contacted on Friday and informed that their last days would be January 21 and that they would get two months’ worth of severance, the media has reported.
The Stockholm, Sweden-based streaming giant's list of laid-off employees also includes Spotify Studios head Gina Delvac. Some other employees were, however, reassigned, according to a report published in The Verge. Spotify has not officially commented on the report.
Julie McNamara, head of US studios and video, acknowledged the layoffs and said shutting the studio down would enable the company to “move faster and make more significant progress and facilitate more effective collaboration across our organization", the report by The Verge added.
It is likey that the decision to lay off several Spotify Studios employees could be indicative of the dissatisfaction with the division’s performance or output. It’s hardly a secret that Spotify has dropped billions on podcasting - including the better part of $1 billion on the three aforementioned podcast studios - and the platform added 300,000 shows during Q3 2021, for a total of 3.2 million programmes, according to a report by Digital Music News.
Meanwhile, earlier in December, the audio streaming giant had removed the works of some of the most popular comedians, including Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, John Mulaney, and Jim Gaffigan from its streaming services, due to a royalties dispute. A number of high-profile entertainers are pursuing royalty payments for their jokes when they are placed on the radio, and on services like Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and SiriusXM.