Satellite and streaming audio platform SiriusXM will issue pink slips to around 160 workers in an effort to curb expenses amid a broader restructuring of the company’s operations.
The layoffs represent around 3 percent of SiriusXM’s global workforce and comes about a week after SiriusXM said it lost around 430,000 subscribers in 2023, including a loss of 94,000 customers during the last three months of the year.
In a memo sent to SiriusXM employees on Monday, CEO Jennifer Witz said the company was in the process of reorienting its business around connected audio platforms in order to grow its paying subscribers.
“To continue on our path to future subscriber growth and sustain our company’s success as the competitive landscape evolves, it’s imperative that we become even more efficient, agile and flexible,” Witz wrote in the memo. “Therefore, today we are making several organizational changes, including the difficult decision to eliminate certain roles, which will allow us to move faster and collaborate more effectively in support of our long-term objectives.”
The layoffs are the second such action in the last 12 months. Last March, SiriusXM issued pink slips to around 475 employees, or 8 percent of its global workforce. SiriusXM ended 2023 with around 5,700 full- and part-time employees.
Last fall, Witz and other executives said SiriusXM would restructure its operations around fan experiences and celebrity-oriented content, which included a full refresh of its flagship streaming radio app. Since then, it has launched full-time or pop-up channels with John Mayer, Kelly Clarkson, Shaggy, Smokey Robinson and Dolly Parton. On Monday, the company said it was launching a new channel in partnership with Usher, who performed one day earlier at Super Bowl LVIII (58).
