Spotify's Layoffs Put an End To a Musical Encyclopedia (techcrunch.com) 21
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On a brutal December day, 17% of Spotify employees found out they had been laid off in the company's third round of job cuts last year. Not long after, music fans around the world realized that the cult-favorite website Every Noise at Once (EveryNoise), an encyclopedic goldmine for music discovery, had stopped working. These two events were not disconnected. Spotify data alchemist Glenn McDonald, who created EveryNoise, was one of the 1,500 employees who was let go that day, but his layoff had wider-reaching implications; now that McDonald doesn't have access to internal Spotify data, he can no longer maintain EveryNoise, which became a pivotal resource for the most obsessive music fans to track new releases and learn more about the sounds they love.
"The project is to understand the communities of listening that exist in the world, figure out what they're called, what artists are in them and what their audiences are," McDonald told TechCrunch. "The goal is to use math where you can to find real things that exist in listening patterns. So I think about it as trying to help global music self-organize." If you work at a big tech company and get laid off, you probably won't expect the company's customers to write nine pages of complaints on a community forum, telling your former employer how badly they messed up by laying you off. Nor would you expect an outpouring of Reddit threads and tweets questioning how you could possibly get the axe. But that's how fans reacted when they heard McDonald's fate.
"The project is to understand the communities of listening that exist in the world, figure out what they're called, what artists are in them and what their audiences are," McDonald told TechCrunch. "The goal is to use math where you can to find real things that exist in listening patterns. So I think about it as trying to help global music self-organize." If you work at a big tech company and get laid off, you probably won't expect the company's customers to write nine pages of complaints on a community forum, telling your former employer how badly they messed up by laying you off. Nor would you expect an outpouring of Reddit threads and tweets questioning how you could possibly get the axe. But that's how fans reacted when they heard McDonald's fate.
Say that again? (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Yeah, I mean every company is different.. but every place I've worked spelled out quite clearly what you can and can't (mostly can't) do with company resources and even to some what you can do on your own within adjacent areas.
It seems unlikely the company was unaware of this side project so one assumes he had some level of blessing, but then again I'm a long time spotify user and had never heard of it..
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The article makes it sounds like it was a product they acquired and are now shutting down, not some side hustle from a rogue worker bee.
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Re:Say that again? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Some quotes from the article:
McDonald created EveryNoise while working at The Echo Nest, a music intelligence firm, which Spotify acquired in 2013.
“The genre project went on to become Spotify’s genre system,” McDonald explained. “It’s my visualization of a dataset that was originally the Echo Nest’s, that is now Spotify’s, and that I worked on and was the main curator of, and wrote all the algorithms and tools for. I wasn’t the only person working on adding genres to it. A lot of people have contributed over the years to building that data structure that powers some things at Spotify.”
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No. The employee and the company he worked for was part of a Spotify acquisition. Post acquisition he seemed to be the only one working on the website, so with the latest round of staff cuts Spotify essentially cut off the service that Spotify owned and maintained.
It worked! (Score:3)
I liked the old sound of Fluke and already knew about Leftfield but now using the tool, these are similar groups to check out:
Morel,Jan Johnston,Lustral,Fuzzy Logic,God Within, Utah Saints, Cut La Roc, Dom Almond
https://everynoise.com/engenre... [everynoise.com]
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Weeellll, I wouldn't go lumping Utah Saints in with Fluke. Maybe Morel. The rest I'll check out now, thanks.
Where are the Ads? (Score:2)
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since when are subscriptions unreliable?
What has Spotify got to do with music? (Score:3)
Aren't they just a podcast hosting company who care more about Joe Rogan than paying musicians?
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Aren't they just a podcast hosting company who care more about Joe Rogan than paying musicians?
Labor isn't exactly free. It costs much less to cut a single large check to Joe Rogan than many, many smaller checks to all of those artists all over the place.
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My point exactly. Spotify isn't a music company, it's a podcast company.
Re: What has Spotify got to do with music? (Score:2)
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pssst your TDS is showing, cover that up in public please.
Since I didn't mention Trump, and don't actually have a clue why you think every random idiot is automatically associated with Trump, I think you have once again demonstrated that the only people who use the acronym TDS to describe another are in fact themselves completely deranged.
I don't give a shit about your politics. I don't even live in your stupid country.
Contact Apple, Google and Amazon (Score:2)
And if he was putting whatever company's logo on his site (just a big "Powered by iTunes / Google / Amazon) on the first page, they would be happy to pay him some money. If he added links so you can purchase the music, or play it if it was availa
What happens with non-revenue-generating projects (Score:4, Insightful)
Technical professionals should take note of what is going on here, and learn from it.
Throughout my career, I have seen a lot of very talented people get caught up in corporate layoffs, where the reaction was very similar to this. "I can't believe they let them go, they were so crucial to !"
Inevitably when this happens, XYZ Project was a "side project". The employee may have had full authority and blessing from their management on the project, but it wasn't what the employee was actually hired to do.
People need to understand that at the end of the day, the expense of your salary is showing up in a balance sheet that has revenue and expense. Every salary has to be tied to one, at some level. When layoffs come down, the first thing that upper management does is look at divisions with declining revenue, and seeks to trim expense. If your side project is not bringing in revenue, then you are an anomaly - and thus will inevitably be scooped up in the layoff.
There are three ways to avoid this from happening to you
- You can avoid side projects totally. This is *NOT* what I recommend, as these are the kinds of projects that help propel your career, and make the difference between who moves up and who stays stagnant.
- You can ensure that, while you may work on a side project, your "day job" is always in a part of the company that has growing revenue. This takes discipline. You need to pay attention to the quarterly all-hands, and how the business is doing... if the business line you work for is doing poorly for multiple quarters - then seek to transfer. You can always take your side project with you!
- The final method is the hardest, but can be the most successful - try to make your side project revenue-generating in some capacity. Many of the largest innovations in our industry started out as side projects. Do not rely on a product manager or external party to figure out how to make revenue - do it yourself.
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Excellent comment. Always be earning.