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Despite the music business nearing a decade of consistent annual growth, thousands of people have exited music companies in the last two years in the biggest wave of layoffs the industry has seen since the early 2000s. Spotify, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and BMG, to name just the biggest examples, have undergone organizational changes that restructured the companies and will collectively save them billions of dollars annually.  

But the wave of layoffs of the ‘20s are vastly different than the cuts music companies made two decades earlier. The most obvious difference between then and now is the direction the industry was headed in the early ‘00s. From 1999, the year Napster introduced the world to peer-to-peer file-sharing, to 2003, the year Apple debuted the iTunes Music Store, U.S. recorded music revenues fell 18.5% from $14.6 billion to $11.9 billion, according to the RIAA. That’s a stark difference to the health of today’s business. In the last four years, the U.S. market has increased an astounding 54%.

The post-Napster years were “a matter of survival,” says Matt Pincus, co-founder/former CEO of music publisher SONGS, who at the time worked in EMI Music’s corporate development division. “That was a one-time elevator drop in the economics of the business caused by a technological innovation that fundamentally disrupted the way that people used our product.”  

The sudden arrival of both file-sharing applications and widespread internet access caused CD sales to plummet, creating a vicious cycle of layoffs, consolidation and more layoffs. Take EMI, which laid off 1,800 of its 8,000 staffers in 2002. Still reeling five years later, EMI was acquired by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007. Terra Firma’s restructuring of EMI resulted in another 2,000 layoffs in 2008. As industry revenues continued to decline, Terra Firma was unable to keep up with its obligations to lenders. Citigroup ended up taking EMI and selling its parts to Universal Music Group and a Sony Corp.-led consortium, resulting in even more layoffs.  

Continuously falling revenues created a need to cut expenses through consolidation. When labels acquired competitors or merged companies to help stop the financial bleeding, the elimination of redundant jobs created the desired cost savings. BMG laid off hundreds of staffers in 2003 when it acquired Zomba Music Group, for example, and another 50 people when it integrated J Records and RCA. The same year, UMG laid off 75 MCA employees as part of the label’s merger with Geffen Records.  

Retail was being purged, too. In 2003 alone, at least 600 chain stores and 300 K-Mart stores — accounting for 5% of the prior year’s album sales — closed their doors, and Best Buy sold the 1,100-store Musicland chain to a leveraged buyout firm. Retail’s problems sent shockwaves through already struggling record labels. When Tower Records went out of business in 2006, Universal Music Group Distribution (UMGD) had to immediately lay off a dozen people, says Jim Urie, former president/CEO of UMGD. 

It seemed like the job cuts would never end. When Universal Music Group cut 1,350 jobs — 11% of its workforce — in 2003, CEO Doug Morris was open to cutting more if necessary. “It depends on how fast the [digital] market gains traction and how fast the CD market continues to erode,” Morris told Billboard at the time. “If [one] doesn’t gain traction and the other erodes faster, we’ll keep trimming, because you have to run a company that way.” 

Two decades later, the music industry is in a vastly better position. Many companies with solid revenue growth were still forced to reduce their staff, though, after over-hiring during the pandemic as digital platforms exploded in popularity. “People got drunk during COVID,” says one former major label executive. Digital businesses “started to have this burst,” he adds, “and we kind of caught a hangover across the business.”  

Public companies — in music but also technology leaders such as Meta and Google — facing investor expectations opted to thin down. UMG, which went from an average of 8,800 full-time employees in 2020 to just under 10,000 in 2023, began laying off staff in March as part of a restructuring that will save an estimated $270 million annually. Likewise, Spotify ballooned from about 5,600 in 2020 to 8,360 in 2022 before laying off about 25% of its workforce in 2023.  

Aside from the need to reduce bloat, recent layoffs reflect the normal course of business that sees companies constantly expanding, shrinking and re-tooling, says Pincus. “The music business goes through consolidation cycles where it becomes more fragmented, and then it consolidates, and then becomes more fragmented, and then it consolidates. We happen to be in a consolidation cycle at the moment. That’s the normal cyclical behavior of the industry. What was going on in the Napster time was not cyclical.” 

Recent layoffs are also about positioning labels “to move forward,” says Urie, “and there are new skill sets involved.” Bob Morelli, former president of RED Distribution, agrees. “As technology has changed, [the business is more about] social media and targeted advertising,” he says. “And now with AI coming in, and it’s harder to get bigger tours, these companies are going to make staffing adjustments.” When Warner Music Group announced in 2023 it would cut 4% of its workforce, new CEO Robert Kyncl described the layoffs as necessary “in order to evolve” and position the company for “long-term success” by hiring for tech initiatives and “new skills for artist and songwriter development.” 

Labels have also revamped how they discover new artists. The stereotypical A&R rep that scours clubs looking for the next big thing has been replaced — or at least augmented — by data experts. “Most of the A&R departments are more like a data analytics thing,” says David Macias, president of Thirty Tigers, an early adopter of the distribution and label services model. “They’re scrubbing data to find spikes that they can justify chasing.” The way labels and distributors pitch music to streaming services has also changed, Macias notes, from a people-focused process to one driven by automation. “How people find the music is going to have to do less and less with people with special relationships.” 

The Atlantic Music Group restructuring may reside in a different category. “That seems like a house cleaning,” says Urie, “because they blew out a lot of people that are perfectly capable.” That’s a sign of a youth movement happening at the label, says another former executive, rather than a reaction to over-hiring or a natural business cycle. Elliot Grainge, the 30-year-old founder of the label 10K Projects, took the CEO role on Oct. 1. Longtime label leader Julie Greenwald announced her resignation five days after Grainge was named CEO. Atlantic ended up cutting roughly 150 jobs — many of them experienced executives with long tenures at the company.  

Regardless of the era or business cycle, music executives — and the CFO making the strategic decisions — must answer the same questions, says Morelli. “What is my company going to look like? Are we going to go after developing artists? Are we going to go after legacy artists? Are we going to do a small amount? Are we going to win with volume? And how do you accommodate getting this message out to potential fans and consumers?”

The thousands of people laid off by music companies in recent years face better prospects than music professionals faced two decades ago. Back then, many executives and artists were still viable but needed the proper infrastructure around them, says Macias, who co-founded Thirty Tigers in 2002 after being laid off from Arista Nashville. Digital startups and the burgeoning digital distribution business gave some people a way to remain in music. But the post-Napster years were followed by another decade of industry contraction as downloads replaced CD sales.  

If the majors aren’t hiring in 2024, the growing independent sector could provide a refuge for the recently unemployed. In recent years, investment in independent music companies has exploded as entrepreneurs in streaming, digital distribution and social media loosened the major labels’ grip on the industry. The current No. 1 song in America, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” comes from an independent, EMPIRE.

“It’s going to be independent labels, like it always has been, that figure out the new way to get new records in the hands of an audience that doesn’t know they like it yet,” says Pincus.