In December, almost 17% of the Spotify workforce faced layoffs, making it the third round of job cuts that year. Following this event, fans discerned that EveryNoise, a highly popular music discovery site, had abruptly ceased its operations. Behind the two incidents lay a common reason - the layoff of Spotify’s data alchemist Glenn McDonald, the mind behind the creation of EveryNoise.
Without access to Spotify’s internal data, McDonald could no longer manage EveryNoise that was an essential platform for ardent music enthusiasts. McDonald explained his goal of letting global music self-organize through patterns in listening habits. However, the loss of access to valuable internal data made it impossible for him to sustain the project.
The repercussions of Spotify’s decision were soon felt across its user base. The company’s community forums filled with multiple pages of grievances, as did Reddit threads and tweets. Some users took a dramatic stance stating their intention to switch to another service that values its users and employees.
Glenn created EveryNoise during his stint at The Echo Nest, a music intelligence firm acquired by Spotify in 2013. After Spotify’s acquisition of The Echo Nest, the data McDonald hosted on EveryNoise became the blueprint for Spotify’s genre system. This data also powered numerous features on Spotify, like ‘Fans also like’ on artists’ pages and the personalized ‘Daily Mix’.
The abrupt cessation of EveryNoise’s operation has left its features like the New Releases, no longer operational, despite the website’s present active appearance. Though McDonald still wishes to fix the problem with the help of public tools, the site currently just portrays a static snapshot of its final state before McDonald’s layoff.