Spotify reports record profits of over €1billion

nme.com:

Spotify has announced record profits of over €1billion (£860m), following staff being laid off, subscription prices rising and costs being cut across the board.The growth of the company comes as streaming continues to dominate the music industry, and the platform has gone on to offer its subscribers access to podcasts and audiobooks too.Currently, the Swedish company has around 615million users across the globe, and has invested a huge amount of money in growing the brand since its initial launch back in 2006.

However, reports of the profit come following a year of the brand cutting costs and laying off staff.Late last year, Spotify announced that it was cutting down 17 per cent of its workforce in order to save costs.

That was after an earlier decision to lay off another 6 per cent of its staff at the start of 2023, which at the time it said was to promote “speed”.Chief executive Daniel Ek said he made the “difficult” decision as economic growth has “slowed dramatically”.

Spotify employs around 9,000 people, meaning 1,500 jobs were estimated to have been lost in the current round of layoffs.It also comes following the news that the streaming service had officially demonetised all songs on the platform with less than 1000 streams.The policy was launched on April 1 and came after the streaming giant released a report last year, Modernising Our Royalty System, in which news of the decision first appeared.