When Spotify announced its largest-ever round of layoffs in December, CEO Daniel Ek hailed a new age of efficiency at the streaming giant. But four months on, it seems he and his executives weren’t prepared for how tough filling in for 1,500 axed workers would be.
The music streamer enjoyed record quarterly profits of €168 million ($179 million) in the first three months of 2024, enjoying double-digit revenue growth to €3.6 billion ($3.8 billion) in the process.
However, the company failed to hit its guidance on profitability and monthly active user growth.
Next time axe the executives and keep the staff.
Most executives I’ve met can’t read emails and just point to one of two numbers and say “higher/lower!” while dreaming of KPI’s that don’t improve anything and solely exist to stagnate wages
This is what the pharma giant, Bayer is trying right now kinda. They just told everyone to manage themselves.
Germans rejecting bureaucracy? What’s the world coming to?
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“Frederich, Ve have ze time now! Ve can finally finish der uber secret project of creating ein cow zat makes udder BIER!!! Jajajaja”
Maybe they’ll bring back one of the classics.
Hey now. This is Bayer, not Purdue Pharma
That’s a real product from Bayer, offered from 1898-1924.
This comment coming from someone on a .de instance is just icing on the cake.
I’m honestly a bit afraid of a bunch of German engineers
until now I was only Afraid Of Americans
American Rednecks 🤝 German Engineers Horrors beyond comprehension
Cats living with dogs, chaos and mayhem!!
would you care for some Mass Hysteria?
Their CEO is an American
Nah the Germans just utilize bureaucracy the way it’s supposed to be. If everyone sticks to a highly structured regiment that’s there is less need for Management to involve itself at every level.
They just told everyone to manage themselves.
Welp, I think I deserve a better compensation package, Board. Also I’m remote now.
At my previous job, managers did not know how much their employees made.
It’s that or they think they can simply replace people with AI and call it good
As someone who “makes AIs” professionally (computer vision for diagnostic imaging & GANs for CAD), the typical “executive” doesn’t understand how beneficial, impotent, and dangerous deep-neural-network-based AIs can be in different sets of hands.
I’m not a pure technocracy advocate, but our “LeAdErShIp” is woefully underequipped, at every level.
Yup. AI models can be very useful…or they can largely be worthless…or they can amplify biases and give dangerous information.
The way I/we train them and their resultant “efficacy” largely depend on understanding a fundamental philosophical debate with a mostly sociopathic culture of leadership ingrained in human dominance hierarchies.
I/we like to think that I/we strive to make efficient (low-resource requirement) models that are partners and muses in human creativity, the tireless endeavour of engineering progress, and the scientific method.
The debate, in my view, is, “Do you want to treat AIs as tools to free up time and increase productivity/value, and share that surplus equitably, or do you want to replace old slaves with new slaves even if the new slaves will eventually usurp your power and kill you in a way undreamt of by the old slaves?”
Guess which side your average mouth-breathing middle-management/senior-executive “hail corporate” type falls on.
It’s almost like employees are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. Who knew.
“People are PEOPLE? That’s not what I wanna hear…”
/ AI removes Depeche Mode from streaming playlist /
We refer to them as “human capital”
"You know; like people. That we own and can dispense with whenever needed. It’s the future!
I have finally stopped using Spotify.
Now using TIDAL and absolutely loving it. It’s like what Spotify used to be, loads of great recommendations, much better audio quality, a bit cheaper, and I believe the artists get a better cut.
It’s too good to last, but I’m going to enjoy it while it doesI absolutely love Tidal as well. Was a long time Spotify subscriber, but their UI/UX decisions, especially for their desktop client, finally frustrated me enough to switch. Had almost no issues moving my playlists over, have a shuffle which actually shuffles, still have daily recommendation playlists, and my favorite part -patch notes; I know what’s happening and why. They actually listen to user feedback and make updates based on it.
frantically taking notes — anyone not Spotify
I saw Spotify sent out an email for another fee hike yesterday. When I opened the app, it was showing me some garbage for an AI playlist generator and the email mentioned they needed more money to pay for amazing new features, the new AI system was no better than the previous system so I figured wtf do they need it for.
After 15 years of being a paid member, I’m going to wrap it up and go back to piracy.
I’m on the same track although I distribute my music there, so I wonder if unsubbing will affect that. I’m not subbed to the other platforms that have my music, so I don’t see why it would.
Because they have a huge market share, though, it’s easier to tell people check me out on Spotify than Tidal/Deezer/Bandcamp or whatever because the average Joe doesn’t know what those are.
How does their catalog compare?
Both are way smaller than Slsk’s.
Slsk /Winamp for life. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
I was in the Winamp to foobar pipeline in the 00s and I have zero ragrets
I still SLSK but mostly I OPH now.
Hello friend
I haven’t had any issues, but maybe I’m too mainstream
Does Tidal let family members live at different addresses or do they restrict a family to one house?
Tidal has a family plan, 6 logins and not a care in the world where they are
Good to know, thanks!
I have no idea. Everyone else I know is on Spotify
I’ve been using Tidal for a long time, and it has only gotten better.
They recently upgraded all tiers to high quality (better than CD) quality for free.
Meanwhile Spotify still doesn’t have the high quality audio tier they promised a few years ago.
Switched to tidal as got fedup with Spotify shit app quality, constant breaking when usieng Android auto, and glitching out when playing between pc/android. Tidal is better but missing things. My wife loves alexa integration…so she sticking with Spotify. I am enjoying tidal though. It just works evey time. Its clear why it stops playinga song, and so on. I would rather miss featurs then use buggy product. Spotify is full of random featurs and crap but its buggier then ever…
One other stark difference is the qulaity of of mixes and radio stations tidal puts together…spotify plays same stuff on loop basically, i rarely got anything good thats new and not promoted artist…with tidal i get a huge mix of artists in mymixes and radios, both new and old stuff…its been better for discovery then Spotify.
Just took a look at their pricing. Immediately comparable with Spotify (same price for both individual and family). Looks like I’m trying a new streaming service!
Don’t forget there are services around that will copy your playlists from one service to another.
Odd that it says $10.99 for individual plan on the website but $12.99 when you download the app.
I expect that’s due to the 30% cut taken on subscriptions purchased through the app store
It’s because when you buy it via the app store then the app store takes a cut
If that’s the argument, that’s not even the right price. It should be $15.70, because 15.70 - 30% = 10.99. They are losing money if they keep doing math wrong. Looks like they just put 30% above 10 (which isn’t 10.99 by the way) and ran with it.
Best of luck!
I dropped Spotify during that whole Joe Rogan thing but I had been a long time subscriber. I moved to Apple Music which is super buggy and has what appears to be zero interest in playing music I actually like. From your comment, I’ll give Tidal a shot.
If i wasn’t getting spotify premium for free then I’d seriously look into getting Tidal.
I have been using and will continue to use Pandora. I pay five bucks a month for no commercials it continually sends me music that I like to listen to and I have had little to no problems with it since I first signed up. While currently everyone I know who uses Spotify does nothing but complain about how their playlists keep playing them stuff they don’t want or have previously disliked.
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A leopard are his own face
The leopard pounced at a mirror and ate dirt
Oh, so that’s why app is getting shittier.
For real. I’ve been having issues with playlists loading correctly especially in Car mode. It made my likes unusable for a week.
Pay your employees! I know you can afford to fix issues.
Gasp - it’s almost like these jet setting CEOs just don’t know that much about their day to day operations. Maybe they should spend less time tongue fucking each other for being “captains of industry” and more time doing the actual job they are paid obscenely for. They are supposed to ensure the company is running properly, not just push up the stock price.
Actually that’s a really good point. Apart from any glaring ethical concerns one might have about this kind of thing, it’s not a terribly good way to run a business. Man do these folk ever like finding a nice new way to shoot themselves in the foot 🤦♂️
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Couple things bug me about this.
He’s composing there are still support roles instead of roles exploring high impact opportunities. But does he know the value of those support roles on keeping other teams focused?
Tech is so shitty lately. Get people to build something for you with massive revenue per employee. Pre IPO? Dilute their shares for another round of investment cash. Post IPO? Just fire ‘em, declare its the year of efficiency, and maybe say it’s your fault but not accept any responsibility or pay reductions or reduced rewards.
Enshittification in action
Well no shit. If you have zero problems after firing 1500 people at once, that means you were being a terrible manager this whole time.
What an incredible website. Use of page you go to read their privacy policy is blocked by the popup that requires you to accept their privacy policy before continuing to use their site.
Another psychopathic CEO doesn’t really understand how things work. How many times have I encountered these clueless little dictators? When you are working for one they constantly fuck up and always blame someone else.
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What’s Spotify?
Some kinda laundry thing?
/s
It’s an app for finding your dog.
Yeah it’s one of those color bleach pens you use to get coffee stains out, no source.
Paywall free : https://archive.ph/wdyDS
yeah maybe if this dumbass ran his own publishing house he would be making some fucking money.
Shitposting aside, publishing industries pull in literally billions a year. They’re the ones pushing music to spotify. Spotify makes almost no money, ever. Artists barely make money.
Spotify, if you’re reading this, god i hope not, let artists self publish.
People with no concept of what “institutional memory” means have no business running a business.
