Spotify laid off 17% of the company — its third round of layoffs this year — and canceled two highly acclaimed shows, including a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting.
In 2021, a year that saw venture capital flowing like champagne at a Gatsby party, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told Forbes that he wanted his company to be like the Instagram or TikTok of audio.
In the last handful of years, we watched as Spotify acquired too many podcasting companies to count — Gimlet, The Ringer, Anchor, Parcast, Megaphone — and then courted big names from Joe Rogan, to Alex Cooper, to Prince Harry with eight- and nine-figure deals.
The company dumped over a billion dollars into its efforts to corner podcasting but now has canceled over a dozen shows from the studios it spent so many hundreds of millions to acquire, like Parcast and Gimlet, which have since been combined into one entity and decimated.
“Spotify told show teams that their podcasts were being canceled because of low numbers,” said a joint statement by the Gimlet and Parcast unions, posted after a round of layoffs in October 2022.
This “maximum growth” mindset has poisoned venture-backed digital media companies like Buzzfeed, which descended from a shining star to an IPO embarrassment.
The original article contains 911 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Spotify laid off 17% of the company — its third round of layoffs this year — and canceled two highly acclaimed shows, including a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting.
In 2021, a year that saw venture capital flowing like champagne at a Gatsby party, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told Forbes that he wanted his company to be like the Instagram or TikTok of audio.
In the last handful of years, we watched as Spotify acquired too many podcasting companies to count — Gimlet, The Ringer, Anchor, Parcast, Megaphone — and then courted big names from Joe Rogan, to Alex Cooper, to Prince Harry with eight- and nine-figure deals.
The company dumped over a billion dollars into its efforts to corner podcasting but now has canceled over a dozen shows from the studios it spent so many hundreds of millions to acquire, like Parcast and Gimlet, which have since been combined into one entity and decimated.
“Spotify told show teams that their podcasts were being canceled because of low numbers,” said a joint statement by the Gimlet and Parcast unions, posted after a round of layoffs in October 2022.
This “maximum growth” mindset has poisoned venture-backed digital media companies like Buzzfeed, which descended from a shining star to an IPO embarrassment.
The original article contains 911 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!