Downtown Music Holdings is making a brand new spherical of layoffs on the unbiased rights administration and music companies agency.
The layoffs had been reported by Billboard on Wednesday (March 22), citing Downtown CEO Andrew Bergman’s e mail to workers the identical day.
The workers memo instructed that Downtown’s downsizing will principally have an effect on roles inside Downtown’s CD Child, Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust and Downtown Music Holdings divisions.
Downtown is the mother or father firm of Downtown Music Publishing, representing artists similar to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Booker T. Jones, George Gershwin, Miles Davis, Hans Zimmer, John Prine, Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco and Jimmy Napes.
“Downtown’s administration workforce has made the choice to cut back the dimensions of our workforce in sure areas of the group, particularly CD Child, Publishing, Songtrust and DMH,” mentioned Bergman within the memo shared with workers.
The memo didn’t affirm what number of roles can be affected.
The transfer comes round 5 months after CD Child and Soundrop laid off 28 staff, citing “financial situations” and “unsure instances,” it was reported on the time.
“Downtown’s administration workforce has made the choice to cut back the dimensions of our workforce in sure areas of the group, particularly CD Child, Publishing, Songtrust and DMH.”
Andrew Bergman, Downtown Music Holdings, in a workers memo on Wednesday (MArch 22)
Almost two years in the past, the broader Downtown group reduced its headcount in Nashville by an unspecified quantity following the corporate’s sale of 145,000 publishing copyrights to Harmony for round $400 million.
Downtown mentioned within the e mail cited by Billboard that the workforce discount is a part of the corporate’s reorganization, which it mentioned “harmonizes the previous a number of years of strategic investments and divestitures.”
The group made plenty of acquisitions up to now years to spice up its choices.
CD Child joined the corporate in 2019 following Downtown’s $200 million acquisition of its mother or father firm AVL Digital Group, whose portfolio additionally consists of AdRev, DashGo and Soundrop. Lower than a 12 months later, Downtown acquired B2B music tech and companies platform FUGA in a deal believed to be price upwards of $40 million.
Most lately, Downtown purchased London-headquartered music expertise firm Curve Royalty Programs in January and made strategic investments in firms like tech startup Vampr, dubbed because the ‘LinkedIn for Creatives,’ and artists financing platform Beatbread.
Bergman, in his e mail to workers, mentioned Downtown will work to make sure that staff affected by the layoffs can be positioned in different positions throughout the group.
On LinkedIn, Downtown nonetheless has open roles in its Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Mexico places of work, whereas its unit FUGA is hiring plenty of workers in Amsterdam, France, London and Berlin.
The reorganization will align the corporate’s expertise, sources, expertise and companies “to fulfill the evolving wants of the music group whereas on the similar time bearing in mind this era of financial uncertainty,” Bergman mentioned within the memo.
The layoffs at Downtown means that the music business is not any exception to the wave of job reductions happening globally.
Spotify, in January, mentioned it’s lowering its world headcount by 6%, whereas Utopia Music, in November, confirmed to MBW that it has made plenty of layoffs.
Simply this week, Twitch mentioned it’s chopping greater than 400 roles as a part of the widespread layoffs at its mother or father firm, Amazon.
Music Enterprise Worldwide
