Spotify said on Wednesday it would roll out new features like smart shuffle and previews of podcasts and music playlists on its audio streaming platform, as it crossed 500 million in monthly active listeners.

The Swedish company, which has invested heavily in building up its podcast and audiobooks business in recent years in a bid to attract users and advertisers, announced the “new re-imagined user interface” at its Stream On event.

Spotify also shared an update to its annual music royalties report, noting that the number of artists making over $1 million (roughly Rs. 8 crore) as well as those generating over $10,000 (roughly Rs. 818,500) had more than doubled in the past five years.

Earlier this year, Spotify said it would tighten spending and work to become efficient given the tough macroeconomic backdrop and projected the number of listeners would reach 500 million in the current quarter.

Features like autoplay for podcasts, personalized visual and audio previews of podcast episodes and audiobooks or music playlists, and new feeds for discovery will be rolled out in waves starting Wednesday, Spotify said.

Back in January, Spotify said it would cut 6 percent of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million (roughly Rs. 408 crore), adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.

The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta to Microsoft to shed thousands of jobs.

“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.

© Thomson Reuters 2023