Spotify is going to shut down its own original podcast studio

As many of you may probably know, Spotify has been investing in the ever-growing podcast industry in recent years. Despite that, the music streaming service has decided to shut down its in-house podcast Studio 4.

It seems that Spotify has now told employees that work at Studio 4 that it will be closed after January 21. Original shows, such as Dissect and Chapo: Kingpin on Trial, were produced in Studio 4. Well, luckily this isn’t the only podcast studio that the company owns; however, it was the first in-house studio that it created before its major studio acquisitions.

Some of the employees working at Studio 4 have been reassigned to other positions, while some unfortunate ones were laid off with the option to apply for another job at the company. So far, Spotify hasn’t given a reason as to why it is closing Studio 4, but a reported internal note stated this was done to help the company progress faster. Additionally, another reason for the closure given by Spotify in the internal note was to “facilitate more effective collaboration” across the organization.

Reportedly, the affected employees were quite surprised and some of them found the news quite upsetting.

For the moment, it is unclear what will happen to the Spotify shows that were produced at Studio 4, but not all of them may be abandoned. For example, Dissect Podcast will not be canceled and will continue as usual on Spotify, according to the show’s official Twitter account.

Spotify’s presence in the podcast market has been steadily growing, and last year, the company introduced paid podcast subscriptions. Recently, it also acquired a firm that possessed the technology to easily transform broadcast audio to podcasts, in an attempt to enrich the podcast experience to its users.