Spotify’s
UK Gender Pay
Report 2021

Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2021

At Spotify we strongly believe in fairness, equality and diversity and using data todrive progress forward, so we welcome the opportunity to review our gender pay
figures.
Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. This means creating,nurturing and protecting a diverse and inclusive company culture, and committing
to fair pay for all of our staff. Our commitment to inclusive hiring practices andpay equity has never been stronger and we’re always looking at ways to improveand do better.
Building a diverse and inclusive workplace in which everyone is compensatedfairly is incredibly important to us. By considering how everyday organisational
practices can be improved, we can move beyond policies and programmes that
seek to address only the biases within people’s heads, and begin to address
structural forms of bias as well.

A snapshot of the UK business during the period
This is the fourth year that Spotify has reported under the UK Government’s gender pay regulations
and takes a snapshot view of the business as it stood on 5 April 2021.
Since our last report (which looked at the same data set as it stood on 5 April 2020), we havecontinued to grow and pursue ambitious hiring plans. As a result of continued business performance,
our numbers do not reflect any instances of employees on furlough.

What is the gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap refers to the difference between the average earnings of employees that identify
as men or women across an organisation irrespective of role. This is different from equal pay, which
focuses on whether men and women are compensated equally for performing the same or similar
work.

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Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2021

Our snapshot at 5 April 2021
Gender pay gap
MeanMedian

14.5%

13.9%

2020: 15.3%

2020: 19.2%

Representation of women*
Upper quartile

32.6%

67.4%

Upper middle

43.9%

56.1%

Lower middle

51.2%

48.8%

Lower quartile

53.0%

47.0%

45.0%

55.0%

2020: 32.4%
2020: 42.1%

2020: 50.0%
2020: 52.4%

OVERALL

2020: 44.0%

Gender bonus gap**
Mean

32.8%
2020: 40.3%

Median35.4%
2020: 24.4%

Proportion receiving bonus
Women

83.1%
2020: 63.3%Men81.9%
2020: 63.0%* In the period covered by this report, a small number of employees in the UK identify as non-binary. Those
employees and those who did not declare their gender identity are not included in these numbers.
** In accordance with the government-required format, the bonus measurement includes commission, salesincentives, other allowances (such as relocation allowances) and bonus payments, but also income realised
through our long term incentive programme which is offered to all permanent Spotify employees.
Every new permanent hire receives a long term incentive award but the choice each employee makes – both interms of the mix of cash and equity they wish to receive and the timing of realising value from the awards – will
impact the numbers we see in each reporting period.

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Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2021

What do our numbers show?
On 5 April 2021, 45% of our employees in the UK were women and 55% were men (which is morebalanced, and an improvement from 44% and 56% respectively from 2020). This translates similarly
to our leadership team where 44% were female and 56% were male.
Spotify’s UK mean gender pay gap for 2021 is 14.5% and median gender pay gap is 13.9%. This
demonstrates a reduction of the pay gap in both measures. This is a positive but we know more workneeds to be done to make sure that the gap continues to close. This has been helped by a steady
improvement in representation across different jobs and this can be seen in the improved numbers ineach quartile.
Average mean bonuses for women over the 12 months covered by this report were 32.8% lower thanmen, and 35.4% lower at the median. This is less encouraging but a result of a particular group ofsenior leaders realising the value of their share awards and bonus payments in the period. The numberof both men and women receiving bonuses in the period rose due mainly to an increase in the numberof employees realising value from our long term incentive programme.
When comparing like-for-like jobs, we see that we are paying men and women equitably; so
representation continues to be the issue highlighted in these numbers (as it does more generally in
the industries in which we operate). However, we continue to actively search for talent of all genders
and backgrounds. In fact, when we look at our adjusted pay gap, calibrating for job, level, function,etc, we see minimal differences between genders, sometimes with a positive impact for women.
While we find the legislation and required calculations can create potentially misleading results,
fairness and equal treatment is at the heart of our decision making, whether at the time of hire, ourannual pay review or when considering an internal job move.
We know the main challenge we face now is reflective representation, and so we’re challenging
ourselves to counter the current trend. For example, we have a global goal to increase female
representation in our Research and Development (R&D) groups to 40%+ (from 32%) and 30% at
leadership level (from 25%) by the end of 2023.

What about other pay gaps and data?
We’ve proactively started on our journey to capturing other demographics – as allowed by law – tohelp us to better understand the profile of our UK employees. We have started looking at ethnicity pay
gap reporting and we hope this will further the dialogue on improving representation of historicallyunder-represeted groups in the workplace.

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Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2021

Our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion andBelonging
We are committed to creating a diverse culture where inclusion and belonging are held up as leading
values by each and every member of staff, and so we continue to push forward with actions that will
help us to build and improve on what we’ve achieved so far. We have a number of ways we’re looking
to do that:•In the UK and globally, we continue to further our inclusive hiring strategy, and rolled out
recruitment training globally for our Talent Acquisition and hiring managers on interviewing andassessing candidates inclusively.

•Since 2015, Spotify has performed an annual global pay equity analysis to ensure that everyone isbeing paid fairly regardless of factors that are not job related, like gender, and race and ethnicity
in countries where the analysis is permitted, such as in the US (and more recently in the UK). If
there is no objective reason for a pay disparity, we make pay adjustments. This analysis also acts
as a check-in between the annual compensation review and the mid-year promotion cycle tocontinue to ensure that our pay practices are fair.

•Gender diversity is just one of the many areas we look at when focusing on how to create anequitable workplace. For example, as a UK business we have a commitment to anti-racism, with alens on anti-black racism, embedding our commitments to ethnic diversity into everything we doboth internally and externally. We have further reaffirmed this by signing up to the UK Equality in
Audio Pact, and most recently to the Tech Talent Charter in the UK as well as the Valuable 500
from a global standpoint. Globally, we are continuing to set ourselves up for success and you canfind out more here.

•During 2021 the new Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging team (DIB) was formalised. The team is
made up of strategy leads, specialists and leaders who support and drive the agenda across thewhole of Spotify. DIB sits alongside Social Impact and Sustainability, within the wider Equity andImpact team led by Elizabeth Nieto.

5Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2021

Despite the challenges of the past year, we can see we have continued to makeprogress.
This year’s results show us that there is still work to do, both as a business andwithin the industries in which we operate.
We continue to believe that being open with how we’re tracking and our desire
to improve representation across all levels of our business is an important way todrive action and accountability.
As we grow and evolve as a business, we remain committed to creating equity inall areas of Spotify.

Tom Connaughton
Managing Director, UK and Ireland
We confirm that the information and data provided in this report is accurate and in line with theEquality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations.
Spotify’s UK Gender Pay Report 2020 can be found here.

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