The world’s biggest technology companies have already laid off tens of thousands of staff between them in recent months, but the cuts are not ending there.
Meta revealed plans for 10,000 more job losses last week, and yesterday Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company would be laying off 9,000 more staff too.
This follows his announcement in January of 18,000 layoffs, with the new round additional to that – so 27,000 in total. Newly affected is one of the Amazon prongs that’s most relevant to the music industry: Twitch.
Following Jassy’s announcement, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy published his own blog post explaining what that means for Amazon’s livestreaming subsidiary: “just over 400 people” at Twitch will be losing their jobs.
“Like many companies, our business has been impacted by the current macroeconomic environment, and user and revenue growth has not kept pace with our expectations,” wrote Clancy.
Some metrics have been positive for Twitch: in January it said that streamers earned more than $1bn on the platform in 2022. But growth in other aspects of its business has clearly slowed.
Twitch has had its tensions with the music industry, with rightsholders frustrated at its lack of platform-wide licensing deals, but it has also been a great platform and moneymaker for a number of independent artists using it for their (often non-musical) livestreams.
So, rather than celebrate its troubles – as some critics will inevitably do – this may be a moment to think constructively about how deeper music partnerships (yes, licences included) can help Twitch to reignite its user and revenue growth.
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