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Spotify to Reduce Staff by 17% in 2nd Layoff this Year

FILE PHOTO: Earphones are seen on top of a smart phone with a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Earphones are seen on top of a smart phone with a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
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Spotify to Reduce Staff by 17% in 2nd Layoff this Year

FILE PHOTO: Earphones are seen on top of a smart phone with a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Earphones are seen on top of a smart phone with a Spotify logo on it, in Zenica February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

Spotify will reduce its total headcount by around 17% across the company, it said in an email on Monday, after laying off 6% of this staff in January citing higher costs.
In the latest third quarter, the company swung to a profit aided by price hikes in its streaming services and growth in subscribers in all regions, and forecast that its number of monthly listeners would reach 601 million in the holiday quarter.
CEO Daniel Ek told Reuters at that time the company was still focusing on efficiencies to get more out of each dollar.
On Monday, he said a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and its performance.
"We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025," CEO Daniel Ek said in a mail to employees.
"Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives."

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At Venice Film Festival, Jude Law Debuts ‘The Order’ about FBI Manhunt for Domestic Terrorist

Jude Law poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'The Order' during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Jude Law poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'The Order' during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
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At Venice Film Festival, Jude Law Debuts ‘The Order’ about FBI Manhunt for Domestic Terrorist

Jude Law poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'The Order' during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)
Jude Law poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'The Order' during the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Jude Law plays an FBI agent investigating the violent crimes of a white supremacist group in “The Order,” which premieres Saturday at the Venice Film Festival.

An adaptation of Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood,” Nicolas Hoult was cast as Robert Jay Mathews, the charismatic leader of the group which was considered the most radical hate group since the Ku Klux Klan. Their crimes, including bank robberies and armored car heists that the group was using to fund an armed revolution, led to one of the largest manhunts in FBI history, in 1983, according to The AP.

“What amazed me was it was a story I hadn’t heard about before,” said Law, who also produced. “It like a piece of work that needed to be made now.”

He added: “It’s always interesting finding a piece from the relative past that has some relationship to the present day.”

Law made the trip to Italy with his director, Justin Kurzel, and co-stars Hoult, Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan for the premiere.

His character, called Agent Huss, is an amalgam FBI agent and not based on a specific person. This, they said, was important for positioning him within this story.

“He represents an awful lot of us,” Law said. “He felt his hardest work was behind him and in fact he had his biggest battle ahead of him.”

Kurzel, an Australian filmmaker known for the 2015 adaptation of “Macbeth” with Michael Fassbender, said he’d always wanted to make an American film in the vein of dramatic thrillers from the 1970s like “The French Connection,” “Mississippi Burning” and “All the Presidents’ Men.” He tried to make this film with the classic simplicity he admired in those classics.

Hoult felt it was a “difficult story to tell and difficult characters to inhabit,” but praised his director for helping to create a safe and creative environment as they explored the darkness of Mathews. He’d just recently learned, on the boat over to the Lido, that Kurzel had told Law to actually follow him around one day to get into character.

“The first time we spoke was in the first scene we interact,” Hoult said. “It gave a great energy.”

And all were struck by the parallels to today. Though no one wanted to comment directly on the upcoming U.S. presidential election, the film, they hope, speaks for itself.

“The history of America is very complex,” Smollett said. “This level of bigotry is not new and it has existed in our nation since it was founded. As artists we get to hold a mirror up to society....explore the very complex sides of humanity, the ugliness, the darkness in order for us to learn from it and hopefully not repeat it.”

“The Order” is playing in competition at Venice, alongside “ Maria,” “ Babygirl,” “The Room Next Door," “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Vertical Entertainment will release the film in theaters later this year.