Spotify said on Wednesday it would roll out new features like smart shuffle and previews of podcasts and music playlists on its audio streaming platform, as it crossed 500 million in monthly active listeners.
The Swedish company, which has invested heavily in building
up its podcast and audiobooks business in recent years in a bid to attract
users and advertisers, announced the "new re-imagined user interface"
at its Stream On event.
Spotify also shared an update to its annual music royalties
report, noting that the number of artists making over $1 million as well as
those generating over $10,000 had more
than doubled in the past five years.
Earlier this year, Spotify said it would tighten spending
and work to become efficient given the tough macroeconomic backdrop and
projected the number of listeners would reach 500 million in the current
quarter.
Features like autoplay for podcasts, personalized visual and
audio previews of podcast episodes and audiobooks or music playlists, and new
feeds for discovery will be rolled out in waves starting Wednesday, Spotify
said.
Back in January, Spotify said it would cut 6 percent of its
workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding
to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible
recession.
The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two
years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That
has led firms from Meta to Microsoft to shed thousands of jobs.
"Over the last few months we've made a considerable
effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn't been enough," Chief
Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts. ©Reuters
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