Supporting half a billion constant users around the world, and staff dealing with local artists and bands from almost every single country. Even outside of engineering they need a ton of support staff — starting from marketing to lawyers. Every country is fairly different as well when it comes to “music style”, so there’s a significant tailoring I would say.
They’re doing whatever they’re doing pretty well as well. It’s basically the only subscription service at this point I wouldn’t consider to get rid of.
> Supporting half a billion constant users around the world
I am sure curl does too, with one guy running it. Spotify is not a telephone company. The engineering work hardly scale with the amount of users. There should be a need for some extra sales staff, lawyers and translators per market.