Read the full memo Spotify's CEO sent employees announcing it would cut 17% of its staff: 'Being lean is not just an option but a necessity'

• Spotify is reducing about 17% of its headcount – around 1500 employees.
• CEO Daniel Ek told employees in a memo they would get an email from HR in two hours.

Spotify is laying off about 17% of its workforce — or about 1500 employees.

The music streaming giant said in a blog post Monday announcing the cuts that "being lean is not just an option but a necessity."

CEO Daniel Ek sent an email to his employees Monday with the same memo shared in the blog post. The email was sent at 1:01 a.m. ET, according to a time stamp on the email reviewed by Business Insider. That is 7:01 a.m. local time in Stockholm, Sweden, where Spotify is headquartered.

"Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive," Ek said in the email and blog post. "Spotify is not an exception to these realities."

The memo said workers would receive a calendar invite from HR within two hours for one-on-one conversations and that meetings would occur before the end of the working day on Tuesday.

"To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us," Ek said in the memo.

Spotify's chief human resources officer, Katarina Berg, shared an FAQ document on the company's internal platform Workplace minutes after Ek's email, two employees told Business Insider.

A screenshot of the document, shared with BI, showed it said that people laid off were selected based on: "a combination of factors including but not limited to organizational design, such as duplication of roles, streamlining layers to ensure efficiency, and optimizing our organization for the next chapter of Spotify."

The company did not specify what departments and teams were impacted by the layoffs, or across which geographical locations the cuts would happen. Spotify has offices across Europe, as well as in the US, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and India.

Spotify said in its FAQ document that "ultimately, it was a Leadership decision" as to who would lose their job.

It comes after Spotify axed about 600 employees in January and then a further 200 in June.

Two Spotify employees, who did not wish to be identified, told BI that some employees expected the further layoffs were looming.

The company shared a blog post in September titled "Unlocking Internal Mobility", which said that internal mobility would be "taking a higher priority." The workers said it signalled the cuts were to come.

"There was also an internal memo about improving device security and specifically strict procedures around locking down laptops once employees leave the company a few weeks ago," one worker told BI.

The internal memo titled "Introducing new locking devices policy," sent by its IT department on Workplace, also indicated the layoffs were coming, they said.

Spotify declined to comment further when contacted by BI.

Read the full email that Ek sent to employees:

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