While the music industry is on track to hit $10 billion by the end of the year, Spotify seems to be going through some major changes. While announcing their integration with Snapchat and Facebook Stories recently, more changes are happening internally. News broke that the Head of Music Nick Holmstén is stepping down.
Holmstén had been serving as the head of music since October 2018. While he is leaving his position, he will be transitioning into an advisory role moving forward. The change comes only a month after the global head of curation Mike Biggane left Spotify as well. Biggane went on to join Universal as the Executive VP of Music Strategies and Tactics. Much of these changes have been occurring at Spotify since the previous CFO of Interscope, Jeremy Erlich joined the band to lead Music Strategy earlier this summer.
Spotify Changes Include Focusing on Podcasts
Investing over $500 million in podcasts alone, the changes in leadership aren’t entirely surprising. It is clear things are moving, and Spotify wants to be the main provider with Podcasts. In February, Spotify acquired 2 major podcast companies: Anchor and Gimlet Media. In close competition, Apple is currently hosting close to 500,000 podcasts, while Spotify has continued to grow at a quick rate since. While almost doubling their listener base to a massive 200 million listeners, they are tuning in across 75 countries worldwide.
Spotify is currently at 108 million subscribers, which is up 31% since last year. However, the news shows Spotify is constantly changing and adapting and we can only wait and see how these changes will effect Spotify in the long run.