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Comment by luxurytent | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised this is making news. At such a number it feels almost like a typical/seasonal adjustment you see from big tech already. Probably the only reason this is being reported and on HN is due to the existing environment :-)

That said, their podcasting play has been poorly executed and I imagine they are losing plenty here with no real profit solution in sight.

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What exactly was their podcast strategy? Was their plan to buy up a bunch of podcasts and podcast production studios and then eventually pull the plug on publishing those podcasts anywhere else, thereby making them exclusive to Spotify? If so, were they unable to do that? Did they try (I mean making some big podcasts exclusive)?

They tried that with Rogan and it didn't go well. Ironically, I don't think the problem was their plan, I think it was that the people that work at Spotify hate people like Rogan and don't want to see him do well. A few execs obviously believe in his content, but the vast majority of Spotify employees I've talked to see him as a dangerous anti-vax transphobe.

so what? companies run on command and control, as much as they try to soften that image. how did the employees hating the product affect their work? I agree work can be better with passionate and invested workers doing it, but workers disinterest or disdain for the product of their work is the norm when they have essentially no ownership over it. they're not a bunch of children who will spin the hamster wheel faster for their boss when it's hillary clinton on their work

by essentially no ownership what I mean is that the amount of ownership granted to workers via equity is negotiated as part of overall compensation in wage labor market (market means it's as low as each company can competitively get away with, so just saying the share exists does not mean it's of the same class), the majority ownership is elsewhere and there are a lot of non-workers who need to get rich off their work. commenting that ESOPs give workers and their owners the same sense of stakeholder ownership is as interesting as saying america has a universally flat ownership class structure because everyone can buy a share on the market

Employees are shareholders, so there's ownership.

What leads you to believe it didn't go well?

I rarely watch it since the move away from YouTube but as far as I'm aware they haven't released numbers.

Anecdoctical, but Rogan seems way less relevant now he's locked in the Spotify walled garden. It could well be that it's just him running out of steam; the whole galaxy he's effectively part of, has significantly fallen in popularity since the Capitol riot.

IMO probably more related to pandemic wind down than the Jan 6 stuff. His podcast has always been pretty eclectic and has siloed audiences based on the topics.

During the pandemic he had a lot of notoriety and relevance because he would platform opinion contrary to the establishment governmental health authorities. To a large degree because of the mis/disinformation guidelines on social media sites, his podcast was the only place a lot of that information could be found and his show gained popularity with a new silo of listeners. He achieved a lot of relevance from that group…and the media because of it, which was hellbent on attempting to “correct” his allegedly dangerous opinions.

Maybe employees think that’s the right answer to give whether they believe it or not?

They made a bunch of Gimlet Media podcasts exclusive to Spotify soon after they bought them, it was irritating at the time but for me at least it was pretty easy to just find some other podcasts to replace them with.

And I suppose more famously they did make Joe Rogan exclusive to Spotify as well, and he's probably the biggest name in podcasting

Incidentally, Neil Young pulling off Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan, inspired me to start a vinyl collection this year.

That was the idea, I think the only real success they have had with an exclusive was the Joe Rogan Experience, I know they have ads on his show but I haven't seen that rolled out to other podcasts.

>What exactly was their podcast strategy?

Don't forget also forcefully add Podcasts to the UI and not allow hiding them. Also some irritating prompts in the initial rollout that kept begging you to try podcasts.

I basically unsubscribed and switched to YT Music because of that.

It's one thing for a company to offer a new service, it's another to try and push shit on consumers that aren't interested.

I hate the meetings where marketing and product spend 30 minutes talking themselves into that kind of pushy behavior on the grounds “our customers will want to be informed.” Or our CMO who likes to say “our paying customers like being marketed to”’with total sincerity.

Not at Spotify, it happens too many places.

Pre-pandemic, you never heard of tech companies doing across-the-board layoffs unless things were going quite poorly. There might have been staff reductions, but they would be targeted: a company axes an entire division, e.g.

Now it seems like since the FAANGs are doing it everyone else is jumping on board. Tech layoffs have become trendy. That's a pretty surprising outcome.

I work in an industry that has layoffs every few years. I'm contract, and its been great. Each job loss has been a pay increase and me doing even more technical work.

The people who were employees and didn't get laid off, they worked extra hours.

If you are flexible, layoffs are probably good for the economic reorganization. If you aren't flexible, this is probably an incredibly stressful time.

I agree, being in the first round of layoffs is the best option if you play your cards right. You typically get the most generous severance terms, have more opportunities than someone who is the last to be laid off in a bad economy and often get a salary adjustment after your long vacation.

The worst is being the team that shuts the lights off behind them, you can expect high expectations paired with salary cuts and getting dumped into the labor pool at the bottom of the market. If things magically do go well those rewards flow to the investors.

So far I've only been in the 2nd group and it sucks.

Spotify did a moonshot to try to corner the podcast market and is now calling it quits.

The environment has changed, we're not in ZIRP anymore. I just saw a LinkedIn post celebrating that their company went from 11 to 100 UI/UX designers in 6 years (at a bank of all places). I'm pretty sure what's about to happen to them, but it's indicative of the whole industry. Companies have over hired in pretty much every department because there was money and there was nobody there difficult hard questions.

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