Universal Music Group to Lay Off ‘Hundreds’ in First Quarter
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music After weeks of rumors, Universal Music Group has confirmed that it will be laying off an unspecified but significant number of employees in the coming weeks.
The company’s recorded-music division is said to be receiving the brunt of the layoffs. UMG chairman Lucian Grainge mentioned forthcoming layoffs in the company’s October earnings call; on Friday, Bloomberg was first to report the scale of the layoffs, although rumors had gained momentum in the last several days and other sources tell Variety the numbers will be in the hundreds.
A Universal rep said in a statement: “We continue to position UMG to accelerate its leadership in music’s most promising growth areas and drive its transformation to capitalize on them.
Over the past several years, we have been investing in future growth—building our ecommerce and D2C operations, expanding geographically, and leveraging new technologies.
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