Spotify jobs cuts, other SA media houses expected

Global streaming service Spotify is the latest to announce that it plans to reduce 17% of its workforce, which equates to just over 1500 jobs.

Spotify is not the only one cutting down its workforce, as some South African media houses have started talks of downscaling.

This is due to several factors which include investors, higher costs for borrowing, a slowing economy, and new technological factors such as redundancies in large tech corporations.

The latest round of job cuts comes as Spotify’s founder and Chief Executive Daniel Ek reportedly expressed reasons behind the shortfall to have been pressure from investors among other issues.

Letters would be sent to those affected by the transition, to mediate one-on-one conversations.

Spotify is the latest tech firm to retrench and follows a list of others -this year – which include Meta, Amazon, and Twitter, now called X.

Rising interest rates are some of the few factors, while cutting costs and letting AI handle the workload may be some of the factors contributing to decisions to reduce the workforce.

The Stockholm-based Spotify has introduced some pivotal ties to some heavy-weight celebrities in introducing their podcasting range. We recently saw Trevor Noah’s What Now? podcast where he featured Dwayne The Rock Johnson as his first guest on the show.

The streaming service in a step towards relevance also previously mentioned Joe Rogan, Emma Chamberlain among other entertainment heavyweights all in sailing past economic challenges.

Who else is expected to cut jobs?

While news remains unconfirmed there have been talks of job cuts in two major media houses in South Africa. The reasons behind the cuts are still speculative, however, downscaling appears to be the direction most organizations are taking.

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