Spotify joins tech layoff trend

Swedish audio streaming company Spotify has announced plans for a round of layoffs that is expected to impact around 6% of its global workforce of some 10,000 employees.

The company has thus become the latest in a slew of tech firms announcing job cuts aimed at cutting costs. 

The move, which was announced earlier this week, will impact around 600 employees and is expected to improve the company’s efficiency, according to a statement.

Many tech companies added to their headcounts during the pandemic, but have since had to shed employees due to dropping advertising revenue and a darkening economic outlook.

“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,” Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek said in the statement addressed to the company's employees.

Spotify also said that its chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff would leave the firm as part of a broader plan for restructuring. Alex Norstrom, chief freemium business officer, and Gustav Soderstrom, chief research and development officer, are expected take on additional responsibilities as co-presidents of the company.

Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are among the largest tech corporations to have announced layoffs recently. Meanwhile, Alphabet, which owns Google, said it would shed 12,000 jobs, more than 6% of its global workforce. 

IBM is also firing around 1.4% of its total workforce, with the cuts coming from its IT services and healthcare groups, while Crypto exchange Gemini will reduce its headcount by 10%.

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