cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/30272690
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.
Edit: Thanks to @Zerlyna@lemmy.world for the paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/wdyDS
Someday, a large corporation is going to finally figure out that firing the people who make their products work results in shitty products no one buys. And instead of firing those people, they’ll fire the bean counters and outside consultants who promised that this quarter’s revenue will look great if they stop employing people to make their stuff.
But today is not that day.
Nah. It’ll be never. So long as they can spend good money to have Mackenzie tell em firing X employees will raise profit .0Y%, they will do it. Because anything else to improve profits would require actual work and investment. And that doesn’t show immediate profitability.
Believe it not hospital boards are like this too. Profits > quality patient care especially when they’re made up of the ‘good ole boys’
The problem is, this isn’t true. The first part certainly is, though many companies are perfectly capable of making shitty products no matter how many employees they have.
The second part though? I would certainly like to believe that, but it’s simply not what happens, especially when it comes to apps and services like Spotify. A huge part of why so much in the tech industry is just absolute ass now is because users are unwilling to try alternatives. Vendor lock in tactics have succeeded, but the average consumer is just lazy and complacent too.
The user experience of Spotify has been dropping dramatically for years. They haven’t lost any users. They have boiled one of the most well cooked frogs in the entire tech industry. And even if you they have a significant portion of users who do actively complain about it, they probably can’t even name an alternative streaming service besides maybe Apple music, and there’s certainly not tech literate enough to understand that you can transfer your library and playlists to another streaming service really easily.
I’ve legitimately explained this to multiple people I know personally who are incredibly frustrated with spotify, and all of them reacted the same way: at the slightest suggestion of putting in a little bit of effort to move away from the platform that they despise, their resolved disappears.
And it’s exactly that mentality, widespread, across so many industries, that allows CEOs to get away with shit like this. They are never punished when consumers are so unwilling to change their habits.
Plus, there isn’t that much by way of an alternative for the same money. Edit: I’ve just done a little legwork, and Tidal might work for me… Even with the recent price hike, it’s £4/user/month for a family plan, for access to 95% of the world’s music.
For all its flaws, and really hit-and-miss algos, I struggled to find something better for around the same money.
Mind elaborating on this?
If you think of corporations as tools, like a straw used to suck resources from the working class it makes more sense.
The goal isn’t corporate fitness, it’s not even corporate profit exactly. The point of a corporation is to make money for those in control of it, who are probably on boards for several other companies and can make new brands and pay to manage reputations as needed.
From a class perspective, this was arguably wise. That CEO will probably get a massive bonus and the board can profit off of the stock price fluctuations. Operations are not that important at this stage as long as it’s functional-ish. The name “Spotify” can be tossed or rehabilitated by PR firms.