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Spotify CEO has acknowledged to being 'carried away' with huge expenditures in the last year, including spending on Meghan Markle and Joe Rogan's podcasts, following the streaming service's $230 million loss.
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According to The Daily Mail, Spotify will spend extensively on podcasts and audiobooks in 2022, with an estimated $1 billion spent on developing its podcast library, which already has over four million items; as a result, the business will lay off 600 staff this month alone.
The viability of these expenditures, however, has been called into doubt, with The Daily Mail reporting that they have 'hurt gross margins' after 'operation expenses climbed at double the rate of Spotify's sales.'
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek commented on this, saying, "In hindsight, I maybe got a little carried away and over-invested relative to the uncertainties we saw forming up in the market."
The comment comes after Spotify allegedly paid $18 million on a three-year arrangement with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, which included the publishing of the Duchess of Sussex's Archetypes podcast.
However, Spotify's greatest cost came in 2020, when they paid an estimated $200 million for a multi-year agreement with US podcast sensation Joe Rogan.
