Pandora and iHeart rival Slacker Radio has axed 25% of its workforce in a dramatic downsizing.
The San Diego-based streaming radio company confirmed the move today, citing its need to “focus on efficiency and accelerate the path towards profitability”.
The news comes three months after loss-making Pandora announced that it was cutting 7% of its staff headcount, with around 100 jobs on the chopping block.
Slacker Radio was launched in 2007 by Dennis Mudd, the ex-CEO of MusicMatch – which was purchased by Yahoo Music and became known as Yahoo! Music Radio.
The company’s current CEO, Duncan Orrell-Jones, said in a statement today: “Slacker Radio is laying off approximately 25% of the team as part of our ongoing effort to focus on efficiency and accelerate the path towards profitability.
“Slacker Radio is laying off approximately 25% of the team as part of our ongoing effort to focus on efficiency and accelerate the path towards profitability.”
Duncan Orrell-Jones
“Our strategy has always been to innovate in the radio and music space, and we’ve been working hard to develop new experiences that we believe will fulfill the promise of radio reimagined. The Slacker Radio app will not be affected by these changes, nor will several new product releases that are scheduled for later this year.”
Before joining Slacker in 2014, Orrell-Jones previously worked at Nintendo of America and Disney Interactive Media Group, Asia Pacific.
In 2013, Slacker was reported to have somewhere between 500,000 and a million paying subscribers in the US, amongst 35m registered users.
Slacker Radio is available in three pricing tiers – Basic (free), Plus ($3.99/month) and Premium ($9.99/month).
The company says that it offers ‘next-generation personalized radio, allowing music lovers to choose from the broadest selection of human-curated music, news and sports stations that are personalized to their taste’. Listeners can also create their own stations.
Slacker recently introduced a ‘Sound Bytes’ feature to ‘combine the voice and personality of broadcast, with the convenience and control of digital’.
As a result, listeners can hear a range of artists from John Legend to Luke Bryan to The Black Keys play “Guest DJ” – introducing their favorite songs and the stories behind them.Music Business Worldwide
