Spotify announced Monday it’s cutting 6% of its global workforce as the music streaming company contends with a gloomy economic environment that has seen consumers and advertisers alike limit their spending.
Spotify has a total workforce of around 9,800 people, which means the impact of the cuts is about 600 employees. According to its LinkedIn profile, the company employs 5,400 people in the U.S. and 1,900 in Sweden. Shares of Spotify climbed more than 3% Monday on news of the cost-cutting measures. Spotify, which is based in Sweden but listed on the New York Stock Exchange, sent an internal memo to staff Monday announcing the layoffs.
One-on-one conversations with affected employees will begin over the next several hours, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, wrote in the note, which was posted publicly on the company’s website. “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,” Ek said.
