Just over five months after nearly 30 members of the CD Baby and Soundrop teams were laid off, Downtown Music has reportedly announced another staff cut.
The latest layoffs at the downtown New York headquarters came to light from a recent Billboard report, which quotes an internal message from CEO Andrew Bergman. However, at the time of writing this article, the company has not shed light on the exact extent of the cuts or otherwise addressed this issue in the media.
And as for the latter direction, it’s worth noting that Downtown has not publicly named the number of professionals affected by the originally mentioned layoffs of CD Baby and Soundrop last October. However, employees of the owner of FUGA told DMN that “about 30” people were affected, and also stated that employees “are becoming a corrective variable for the business.”
In any case, a significant portion of the new layoffs will reportedly affect individuals working in the publishing industry, including affected divisions including CD Baby, Songtrust, Downtown publishing division and Downtown Music Holdings.
In addition, the message mentions “a number of savings measures we are taking,” although without details about these measures. “The reorganization harmonizes the last few years of strategic investment and sales,” reads the email announcing the layoffs, which come after Downtown acquired Curve Royalty Systems in early 2023.
Finally, regarding the details of the cuts, city center executives are expected to meet with their team “in the coming days to more directly share plans for each division.” It doesn’t look like any of the fired people haven’t posted news stories on LinkedIn yet, and the city center hasn’t responded to a request for comment in time for publication.
But the layoffs and cost-cutting measures represent just the latest of the recent efforts made by a host of companies to cut costs.
Earlier this week, Amazon announced plans to cut another 9,000 jobs, and it subsequently emerged that the cuts would affect approximately 400 Twitch employees (and possibly also Amazon Music employees). Also in March, Meta queued up another 10,000 layoffs (parting with the northern part of 11,000 team members in November), while SiriusXM laid off 475 employees “in almost all departments” due to “today’s unstable economic situation.”
Instagram Facebook’s parent company Meta, meanwhile, is still embroiled in a licensing showdown in Italy, and the global publishing industry has condemned the alleged “unsurprising power weapon tactics” of the Menlo Park-headquartered company.
