(Stockholm) The world’s number one audio platform, the Swedish group Spotify, announced on Monday the reduction of 200 positions in its podcast activities, or 2% of its total workforce.

Less than six months after an initial cut of 600 job cuts, the streaming platform said it had begun “the next phase” of its “podcast strategy”, after heavy investment in recent years.

Spotify has made the “difficult but necessary decision” to cut approximately 200 people from its podcast business, the New York-listed group said in a statement.

The historic leader in legal music streaming, the Swedish platform has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in podcasting in recent years, also becoming number one in the world.

But the profitability of this niche has yet to be demonstrated, according to analysts.

Around 10:30 a.m. EST on Wall Street, Spotify stock was up 2.70% to $115.83.

At the end of January, the audio platform had already announced the reduction of 6% of its workforce to reduce costs.

Its managing director, Daniel Ek, then conceded that he had been too ambitious “by investing faster than (the) growth in turnover” of the group.

While Spotify has been profitable from time to time, the Stockholm-born group has been steadily posting losses for several years, despite skyrocketing subscriber growth and a lead over rivals like Apple Music.

At the end of the first quarter, Spotify reached a new high of 515 million active users, up 22% year-on-year.