Spotify’s Chief Financial Officer, Paul Vogel, has announced he will be leaving the streaming platform in March next year, days after the company announced it was laying off almost a fifth of its workforce to cut costs.

Vogel has been with the company since June 2016, joining from Barclays as Head of FP&A, Treasury and Investor Relations before being promoted to CFO in 2020.

The exit comes as the company announced earlier this week it will be cutting 17% off its workforce.

In a letter, Founder and CEO Daniel Ek said: “Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities.

“To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.”

The company has launched an external search for Vogel’s successor, it revealed.

Ek said: “Spotify has embarked on an evolution over the last two years to bring our spending more in line with market expectations while also funding the significant growth opportunities we continue to identify.

“I’ve talked a lot with Paul about the need to balance these two objectives carefully. Over time, we’ve come to the conclusion that Spotify is entering a new phase and needs a CFO with a different mix of experiences.”

He added: “As a result, we’ve decided to part ways, but I am very appreciative of the steady hand Paul has provided in supporting the expansion of our business through a global pandemic and unprecedented economic uncertainty.”

“As we initiate the search for a new leader, we do so from a position of strength. I am enormously proud of the strides we’ve made as a company.”

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Spotify’s head of global marketing, Louisa Ferguson, has described this year’s Wrapped as the “realest” so far, despite something about 2023 feeling “especially chaotic” with regards to how people consumed culture.

This week, the online streaming platform launched its Wrapped personalised user experience with new interactive features to help fans celebrate their year on the app, alongside a creative marketing campaign across OOH, digital social and on-platform across 31 markets.

“We wanted to acknowledge that feeling because it felt very accurate to 2023,” Ferguson said.

“Amidst all this, we realised that “your Wrapped doesn’t lie.” The data is real. And so we leaned into creating the realest Wrapped ever.”

According to Ferguson, who has been with the company since 2020, this year’s Wrapped campaign has been the biggest campaign it has delivered with individual statistics being created for millions of users across 170 markets and in over 35 languages.

She continued: “We started the year with Playlist in a Bottle and were overwhelmed by the positive user response. We expanded the My Top Five franchise. We also developed a genre-based experience called “Find Your Flow.”

“These experiences represent a new way of thinking about marketing and product at Spotify and there’s more coming after Wrapped, which I won’t give away just yet.”

“Wrapped is the capstone of what has been an incredibly delightful year of Spotify interactive experiences,” she added.

“Originally, we believed these experiences needed to be short and sweet. But we’ve found that there’s a cohort of fans that want to go a level deeper. They want to engage. This was exciting because it inspired us to do even more data-rich, complicated experiences.

“We also learned that market nuances matter, and for Wrapped, these learnings just reinforced the need to think critically about global versus local campaign executions.”

Spotify’s global marketing boss also revealed the streaming platform has plans to launch “tons of events” around the world to “celebrate the year in music”, which will be complemented by out-of-home experiences with interactive components.

She said: “We’ll also reveal our top artist through a special billboard moment in several cities across the world.

“I think what’s become wonderful about our Wrapped celebration for the global top artist in particular is that it’s given us permission to deliver special experiences for fans.”

“Some of our coolest, craziest work comes from those collaborations. Critically, it’s a celebration for the fans as much as the artist. We’re able to recognise both and celebrate the achievement,” she concluded.

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Though the terms of the deal have not been shared, Spotify has said that it will use the acquisition to accelerate its entry into the live audio space – a space that is, of course, currently led by Clubhouse.

“Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform,” said Gustav Söderström, Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify. “The world already turns to us for music, podcasts, and other unique audio experiences, and this new live audio experience is a powerful complement that will enhance and extend the on-demand experience we provide today.”

In particular, Spotify aims to use the Locker Room app – which debuted in October 2020 – to open up live audio to a wider range of creators and fans, continuing to host sports-based programming while extending the experience to cater for music and cultural programming. This expansion will also see Spotify debut interactive features including real-time discussions, debates, ask me anything (AMA) sessions, and more.

“We are excited to join forces with Spotify and contribute to building the future of audio – we’ll invest more in our product, open the experience to Spotify’s audience, diversify our content offerings, and continue expanding the community we’ve built,” said Betty Labs Founder and CEO Howard Akumiah. “With Spotify, we’ll continue to offer the best home for sports fans and use the lessons we’ve learned along the way to create the ultimate destination for live conversation around music and culture.”

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The main aim of the update is to align the desktop and web experiences, while making it easier for users to access content. The ‘Search’ feature has been moved to the left side of the navigation page, while the listeners’ profile pages now include top artists and tracks. And users can now start a radio session for any song or artists radio by clicking on the ‘…’ menu.

Spotify is also adding the ability to write descriptions, upload images, drag and drop tracks, and use an embedded search bar in playlists. Moreover, listeners will be able to edit ‘Queue’ and view ‘Recently played’ via the desktop app and have more control over their libraries via a dropdown menu.

Finally, premium subscribers will have the ability to download music and podcasts for offline listening – a feature that has long existed on Spotify’s mobile app.

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Users – whether premium or free – will see a ‘Recently played’ destination on their home screens, enabling them to see up to three months’ worth of listening history and rediscover the content they had recently listened to.

For premium users, new and relevant podcast episodes will be featured upon opening the Spotify app. New episodes will be marked with a blue dot, and episodes that the user has already started will features a progress bar showing how far they are into the episode.

Finally, also for premium users, there will be a section of the home screen offering personalised music recommendations, based on what the user has been listening to, helping music lovers to discover new songs from their favourite artists or uncover a new favourite.

Spotify will roll out these updates to both Android and iOS users around the world over the remainder of this month.

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The music streaming service has launched the ‘Equal Hub’ globally to provide a dedicated space to highlight women creators and enable fans to easily stream their music and podcasts. Despite launching the hub now, Spotify says it will extend beyond the month of March.

Spotify is also featuring women on the playlist covers on more than 200 of its top playlists, including Today’s Top Hits, Viva Latino, and Modus Mio. And Spotify’s non-profit partners (Girls Make Beats, She’s The Music, Sound Girls, GLAAD, Color of Change, Women in Music, and Women’s Audio Mission) will create unique playlists highlighting women who are shaping the future of music.

On top of that, Spotify has debuted a music and talk show called ‘WOMN’ to share personal stories of creators, influencers, and cultural figures including Tokimonsta, Jenny Lorenzo, Spotify’s Dope Labs hosts, Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whately, Celeste, Jazzmyne Robbins, and more.

Moreover, Spotify has setup an invite-only ‘Equal’ board, which will be made up of 15 organisations from around the world, with the streaming service providing each a one-time grant. And, in April, Spotify will launch the ‘Equal music program’ in 50 countries.

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Though still in the ‘early stages’ of its development, Spotify says that the marketplace will enable advertisers to reach audiences in screenless moments at scale on and off Spotify, leverage targeting tools, and explore insights powered by Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI).

The media available via the Audience Network will be addressable based on demographics and audience segment, with contextual targeting eventually being added.

Meanwhile, Spotify will launch SAI in additional markets later this year. It will also unlock more product features, including audience-based buying, native ad placements, and reporting on creative performance, while making the technology available to Megaphone podcast publishers and leading Anchor creators.

SAI was launched at the beginning of 2020 to deliver Spotify’s full suite of planning, reporting, and measurement capabilities for podcasts.

The audio streaming platform has also begun beta testing podcast ad buying on Spotify Ad Studio in the US, as it seeks to make it simpler for advertisers to connect with audiences at scale.

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Spotify Podcast Ads give advertisers the ability to purchase pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad placements within episodes of podcast shows on a title-by-title basis. The offering is powered by Spotify’s proprietary Steaming Ad Insertion technology, which delivers and reports on confirmed ad impressions as opposed to downloads, as well as reach and frequency.

Advertisers are also able to partner with select podcast hosts, and other professional voice talent, on campaigns.

“The popularity of podcasts is rising exponentially in the UK and as a relatively untapped medium for advertisers they offer so much potential for brands to reach diverse audiences in new and engaging ways,” said Rak Patel, Regional Head of Sales UK and Pan-EMEA at Spotify. “Unlike some digital media channels, podcasts are intimate, they are trusted, they reach people in a very direct and personal way. With Spotify Podcast Ads we aim to take podcast advertising to the next level, offering brands unique insights into their audiences and creative solutions that can truly capture consumer attention. We’re really excited about what’s to come.”

The first UK advertiser to utilise Podcast Ads was BT Sport, which launched ads across the Joe Rogan Experience earlier this week.

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Spotify 2020 Wrapped for Advertisers, developed alongside Huge, highlights the music streaming platform’s first-party data and insights about the listening behaviours of its 320m users. Advertisers are able to use the experience delve into the music that their target audiences listen to and use this information to their advantage in future campaigns.

Spotify is also providing ‘best practices’ about how advertisers can use audio to best reach their target audiences throughout the Wrapped experience.

“There’s no doubt that audio streaming habits, like most others, have shifted during the pandemic. At Spotify we are in a unique position as we see shifts in culture play out on the platform – whether that is what people are listening to or how they are listening,” said Rak Patel, Head of Sales UK and Pan-EMEA at Spotify. “Wrapped is a flagship moment for the brand and this year we saw an opportunity to share the insights we have access to with advertisers through a dedicated digital experience, so that we can support their strategic decision making going into 2021. Despite there being lots of uncertainty at the moment, Spotify’s audience continues to grow and consumption is on the rise, making it a reliable place for advertisers to reach audiences where they are.”

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The music streaming platform is leveraging OOH and social to create what it is calling a ‘global circle of gratitude’ for some of the world’s biggest artists, podcasters, and everyday playlist creators. Spotify wants people to find beauty in the chaos through its imagery and is pairing these images with reflections on 2020, including showing gratitude to Captain Tom, and to Glasgow for being home to Lewis Capaldi.

For the first time, Spotify will create a TikTok Hashtag Challenge, where influencers and users will be invited to share their ‘Top Genre’ from their #2020Wrapped and bring it to life in a video.

Spotify has also partnered with Acast for podcast audio ads, formed a media partnership with The Guardian, and created a Lovein Ireland activation on social with IGTV interviews with Irish talent. Then there’s the films of Spotify listeners sharing why they are thankful to their favourite music and podcast creators.

“Wrapped is our flagship marketing initiative of the year – offering listeners and creators a personalised opportunity to explore, celebrate and reflect on their year through the lens of audio and culture,” said Olga Puzanova, Spotify UK/IE Marketing Director. “In a year of ups and downs, we wanted to remember those whose work helped us get through the tough times. From the fans and listeners, to the artists and podcast creators, we wanted to show our gratitude for all of their amazing contributions in 2020.”

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