From The Verge: Spotify is disbanding its founding podcast studio and laying off some of the team. An affected employee tells The Verge that Studio 4, or Spotify Studios as it’s been referenced externally, consisted of 10 to 15 employees and produced shows like Dissect and Chapo: Kingpin on Trial. Spotify called affected employees on Friday and said their last days would be January 21st. They’ll receive two months’ worth of severance. Some employees were reassigned while others were laid off and pointed to the Spotify job board. The studio’s head, Gina Delvac, was also let go.
Spotify declined to comment. In a note to Spotify staff obtained by The Verge, however, Julie McNamara, head of US studios and video, acknowledged the layoffs and said shutting the studio down would enable the company to “move faster and make more significant progress and facilitate more effective collaboration across our organization.”
For a company sharing news of its podcasting endeavors most anywhere it can, Studio 4 rarely, if ever, showed up in the press. (I only documented one public use of it.) However, Studio 4 does occasionally appear in earnings reports as Spotify Studios. It was the first podcasting studio Spotify created and consisted of all the employees who worked on podcasting prior to the company’s major network acquisitions. Additional employees were later hired, but the initial group helped prove the podcasting business model and listener interest with shows like Amy Schumer Presents: 3 Girls 1 Keith, says a former employee who asked not to be identified due to ongoing work in the industry.
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