Universal Music Group To Cut Down On Jobs In First Quarter
Universal Music Group (UMG), home to Taylor Swift and a host of other stars, has announced its plans for 2024, which include a shift towards an “artist-centric” streaming model and significant job cuts. UMG has confirmed it will lay off many employees in the coming weeks, with the recorded music division being hit the hardest. According to Bloomberg, UMG plans to cut hundreds of jobs within the first quarter, with anonymous sources claiming that the recorded music department will be the most affected. UMG, which employed 10,000 workers globally in 2022, has not yet specified the number of jobs to be lost.
There has been a recent wave of job cuts in the music industry. Last year, Warner Music reduced its workforce by 4%, and Spotify cut 17% of jobs in December. However, according to Music Week, Universal Music Group (UMG) is not planning to make cuts on the same scale as Spotify. UMG launched an “artist-centric” streaming model last year to reduce AI-generated content and partnered with Deezer to give “professional artists” a “double boost” while demonetizing “non-artist noise content” from the royalty pool. UMG also removed a viral AI-generated Drake and The Weeknd collaboration from streaming services.
Despite these changes, Bloomberg reports that UMG’s new streaming model will take some time to impact. Therefore, CEO Sir Lucian Grainge may be making job cuts to satisfy shareholders by “trimming costs.” Grainge allegedly referred to the redundancies on an October earnings call, which he called “cut to grow.”
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. While we maintain our industry-leading investments in A&R and artist development, we are creating efficiencies in other areas of the business so we can remain nimble and responsive to the dynamic market, while realizing the benefits of our scale.”
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