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Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.
The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement.
“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” it said.
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Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality hardware team.
The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs. A year ago, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees or around 6% of its workforce.
In a post on X — previously known as Twitter — the Alphabet Workers Union described the job cuts as “another round of needless layoffs.”
“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter,” the union wrote. “We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”
Google is not the only technology company cutting back. In the past year, Meta — the parent company of Facebook — has slashed more than 20,000 jobs to reassure investors. Meta’s stock price gained about 178% in 2023.
Spotify said in December that it was axing 17% of its global workforce, the music streaming service’s third round of layoffs in 2023 as it moved to slash costs and improve its profitability.
Earlier this week, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units. It also will lay off about 500 employees who work on its livestreaming platform Twitch.
Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, on top of 18,000 employees it said that it would lay off in January 2023.
Google is currently locked in a fierce rivalry with Microsoft as both firms strive to lead in the artificial intelligence domain.
Microsoft has stepped up its artificial intelligence offerings to rival Google’s. In September, Microsoft introduced a Copilot feature that incorporates artificial intelligence into products like search engine Bing, browser Edge as well as Windows for its corporate customers.
SCP Merchandising, an Illinois-based merch company used by artists including Mitski, Father John Misty and Carly Rae Jepsen, has shut down, according to a member of SCP leadership still on-site after the company laid off its staff over the weekend.
Based on accounts from multiple former SCP employees on LinkedIn, the company’s employees were abruptly laid off on Sunday evening (Dec. 17). The source tells Billboard that the company will most likely file for bankruptcy and that there is no process yet for clients to retrieve their merchandise, but that those with outstanding balances will not be able to do so until they pay those off with SCP or a potential bankruptcy trustee. They add that priority will be given to clients who have no balance due as well as those who are arranging for payment of unpaid bills.
The source notes that the company plans to send out an email Tuesday (Dec. 19) to clients who do not owe money to figure out pickup or shipping arrangements for their inventory; clients with outstanding balances must first make a payment and then reach out to SCP once that’s been done in order to coordinate receiving their stock. The source says those who still owe “should know that they are in debt to SCP” as the company has been sending past-due statements.
The source adds that after Thursday (Dec. 21), retrieving inventory may be slower for clients as SCP only has bank approval for payroll through that day, “and even so we don’t have enough for the entire job.” They continue: “After that, a court-approved trustee will replace company employees and that’s only one person and I’m not sure what their take on inventory will be. There’s a few different paths it could go. It’s just all very speculative.”
Meanwhile, artists’ online stores that ran through SCP have been taken down entirely, including Mitski, Father John Misty, Alec Benjamin, Dashboard Confessional, Louis the Child and Chappell Roan. One source in artist management says they haven’t heard from anyone at SCP yet and are trying to figure out how to collect their remaining merchandise. According to that source, they initially began working with SCP because the rates were significantly cheaper than their competitors: The company took 15% of net sales compared to around 20% of gross that, the source says, many others take.
Launched in 2013 by owner Stephen Hopkins, SCP bills itself on its website as a “full-service creative collaborator” for artists and brands. Other current and former artist clients include Billie Eilish, Freddie Gibbs, Tanya Tucker, Manchester Ochestra and Wiz Khalifa; the record label Loma Vista Recordings; and the festival Bittersweet Daze.
According to Hopkins’ LinkedIn profile, he also serves as co-founder/CEO of Web3 company Dropolis and co-founded 3E Love, a company that makes clothing for people with disabilities.
Additional reporting by Colin Stutz.
Spotify shares jumped 7.5% on Monday (Dec. 4) following news the company will lay off 17% of its global workforce. CEO Daniel Ek called the layoffs a “crucial step” in a wider effort to be “relentlessly resourceful.” The layoffs amount to roughly 1,500 staffers based on the company’s recent disclosure of having 9,241 full-time employees. […]
Team,
Over the last two years, we’ve put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great and sustainable business – one designed to achieve our goal of being the world’s leading audio company and one that will consistently drive profitability and growth into the future. While we’ve made worthy strides, as I’ve shared many times, we still have work to do. Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities.
This brings me to a decision that will mean a significant step change for our company. To align Spotify with our future goals and ensure we are right-sized for the challenges ahead, I have made the difficult decision to reduce our total headcount by approximately 17% across the company. I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions. To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.
For those leaving, we’re a better company because of your dedication and hard work. Thank you for sharing your talents with us. I hope you know that your contributions have impacted more than half a billion people and millions of artists, creators, and authors around the world in profound ways.
I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance. We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025. Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. While I am convinced this is the right action for our company, I also understand it will be incredibly painful for our team.
To understand this decision, I think it is important to assess Spotify with a clear, objective lens. In 2020 and 2021, we took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital and invested significantly in team expansion, content enhancement, marketing, and new verticals. These investments generally worked, contributing to Spotify’s increased output and the platform’s robust growth this past year. However, we now find ourselves in a very different environment. And despite our efforts to reduce costs this past year, our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big.
When we look back on 2022 and 2023, it has truly been impressive what we have accomplished. But, at the same time, the reality is much of this output was linked to having more resources. By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient. We need to be both. While we have done some work to mitigate this challenge and become more efficient in 2023, we still have a ways to go before we are both productive and efficient. Today, we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact. More people need to be focused on delivering for our key stakeholders – creators and consumers. In two words, we have to become relentlessly resourceful.
I know you will all be anxious to hear the next steps about how this process will work. If you are an impacted employee, you will receive a calendar invite within the next two hours from HR for a one-on-one conversation. These meetings will take place before the end of the day on Tuesday, and while Katarina will provide more detail on all of the specifics, please know the following will apply to all of these bandmates:
Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure.
PTO: All accrued and unused vacation will be paid out to any departing employee.
Healthcare: We will continue to cover healthcare for employees during their severance period.
Immigration support: For employees whose immigration status is connected with their employment, HRBPs are working with each impacted individual in concert with our mobility team.
Career Support: All employees will be eligible for outplacement services for two months.
For the team that will remain at Spotify, I know this decision will be difficult for many. Please know we are focused on treating our impacted colleagues with the respect and compassion they deserve.
Looking Ahead
The decision to reduce our team size is a hard but crucial step towards forging a stronger, more efficient Spotify for the future. But it also highlights that we need to change how we work. In Spotify’s early days, our success was hard won. We had limited resources and had to make the most of every asset. Our ingenuity and creativity were what set us apart. As we’ve grown, we’ve moved too far away from this core principle of resourcefulness.
The Spotify of tomorrow must be defined by being relentlessly resourceful in the ways we operate, innovate, and tackle problems. This kind of resourcefulness transcends the basic definition – it’s about preparing for our next phase, where being lean is not just an option but a necessity.
Embracing this leaner structure will also allow us to invest our profits more strategically back into the business. With a more targeted approach, every investment and initiative becomes more impactful, offering greater opportunities for success. This is not a step back; it’s a strategic reorientation. We’re still committed to investing and making bold bets, but now, with a more focused approach, ensuring Spotify’s continued profitability and ability to innovate. Lean doesn’t mean small ambitions; it means smarter, more impactful paths to achieve them.
Today is a difficult but important day for the company. To be very clear, my commitment to our mission and belief in our ability to achieve it has never been stronger. I hope you will join me on Wednesday for Unplugged to discuss how we move forward together. A reduction of this size will make it necessary to change the way we work, and we will share much more about what this will mean in the days and weeks ahead. Just as 2023 marked a new chapter for us, so will 2024 as we build an even stronger Spotify.
– Daniel
Amazon started cutting jobs in the company’s music division this week, according to Reuters.
“We have been closely monitoring our organizational needs and prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses,” an Amazon spokesperson told Billboard in a statement. “Some roles have been eliminated on the Amazon Music team. We will continue to invest in Amazon Music, and spend our resources on the products and services that matter most to customers, creators, and artists.”
The rep did not provide any information on the extent of the cuts.
The latest wave of cuts adds to a brutal period for tech — and a rough one for the music industry. In the last 18-ish months, the tech behemoths, from Google to Meta to X (formerly Twitter) to Microsoft, have all laid off tens of thousands of workers.
Amazon has also gone through waves of big cuts already, first eliminating 18,000 jobs, and then cutting another 9,000. “The overriding tenet of our annual planning this year was to be leaner while doing so in a way that enables us to still invest robustly in the key long-term customer experiences that we believe can meaningfully improve customers’ lives and Amazon as a whole,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in March.
In July, the site layoffs.fyi, which tracks the tech industry, estimated that more than 386,000 tech workers had been fired around the world since the beginning of 2022.
In music, Downtown Music Holdings, Warner Music Group, Spotify, Motown Records, Soundcloud, BMI, and more have laid off employees. (Downtown and SoundCloud have both done two rounds of cuts.) The language music executives have used in their layoff announcements has echoed messages from the tech world, often relying on buzzwords — think “efficiency” and “evolution” — and emphasizing the importance of “future success” as if that suddenly became an organizational priority.
It’s widely believed around the music industry that there are more layoffs to come.
BMG terminated about 40 employees on Thursday (Oct. 27), sources within the company tell Billboard. The layoffs cut effectively the entirety of its film/TV, theatrical, and international marketing department for recordings as well as its Modern Recordings label, according to sources and an internal memo obtained by Billboard. It took place on the day of the New York office’s annual Halloween party, says a source.
The eliminations include company leaders like Fred Casimir (executive vp, global repertoire) and Jason Hradil (senior vp, global repertoire) and affected employees in its Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles offices. A source within the company fears there are more layoffs to come and believes the layoffs may be a result of the company hiring the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in recent months.
After employees were notified they were being laid off, the company hosted a call with the U.S. recorded music team — including those who were let go — according to a source within the company.
“Everyone at BMG says it feels like a venture capital firm now and not a record label,” laments an employee. “Things got dark real fast, and it bums me out watching a lot of amazing people lose their jobs right before the holidays.”
In a video call hosted by CEO Thomas Coesfeld, the leader explained that the restructuring was part of the implementation of its new strategy, BMG Next, according to an internal memo shared with Billboard. “The international marketing team was set up five years ago in response to the needs of the company at the time,” he said to senior managers. “Our talented team has done a great job, driving international campaigns for artists including Lenny Kravitz, Kylie Minogue, and Louis Tomlinson, but unfortunately on a business level, expectations from this novel structure were not met and it created duplication of functions with local teams. The clear business decision is to instead give artists a single contact point with their local repertoire teams.”
A BMG spokesperson declined to comment beyond providing the memo.
In the last year, BMG — which represents talent like Jelly Roll, Halsey and Lainey Wilson as well as certain rights to the catalogs of Tina Turner, Peter Frampton, Mötley Crüe, and more — has made a number of significant business changes. In January, its longstanding chief executive Hartwig Masuch announced he would retire and would be succeeded by then-CFO Coesfeld, effective Jan. 1, 2024. On April 18, BMG claimed it would be the first music company to fully integrate its catalog and frontline music operations. On May 17, Masuch announced he would accelerate Coesfeld’s transition to CEO to July 1 instead.
In September, BMG announced it was winding down its agreement with Warner Music Group’s ADA and would be taking over direct management of its 80-billion-stream digital distribution later this year. (Digital revenues contributed 70% of BMG’s overall revenues in 2022.) Last week, BMG also announced it would be partnering with UMG’s commercial services division for the distribution of its physical recorded music. Coesfeld described the deal as the first project of a burgeoning “alliance” between the two music companies.
Epic Games and Songtradr confirmed plans to let go of roughly half of Bandcamp’s workforce on Monday (Oct. 16), as the two companies finalized the sale of the popular independent music sales and streaming platform.
Epic Games first announced plans to sell Bandcamp to Songtradr — an online music licensing marketplace — on Sept. 28 amid a broad restructuring that involved laying off 830 employees, or about 16% of its workforce. In addition to divesting Bandcamp, the Fortnite developer also said it would spin off kidtech company SuperAwesome, a move that would impact 250 people in total.
An Epic Games spokesperson declined to comment on how many Bandcamp employees were terminated, but said impacted workers received notification of severance packages on Monday.
In a statement, Songtradr said Bandcamp’s operating costs have “significantly increased” in recent years and the job cuts, which were impacted all divisions, were necessary to “ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans.”
“After a comprehensive evaluation, including the importance of roles for smooth business operations and pre existing functions at Songtradr, 50% of Bandcamp employees have accepted offers to join Songtradr,” according to the statement. “We are looking forward to welcoming Bandcamp into our musically aligned community.”
Songtradr said it will keep popular Bandcamp services, including “artist-first revenue share, Bandcamp Fridays and Bandcamp Daily.”
Employees of the independent music storefront had been attempting to unionize since March, a move prompted by Bandcamp’s 2022 sale to Epic Games. On Oct. 3, Bandcamp workers affiliated with the effort wrote Songtradr’s CEO asking that he recognize their union and extend offers to all current employees. The company ultimately stated that not all employees would receive offers to join Songtradr.
Bandcamp employees affected by Monday’s layoffs described disjointed communication from their new and outgoing employers about the job cuts.
“Officially laid off from bandcamp, after two weeks of waiting in limbo with many of my fellow colleagues,” according to a post by Atoosa Moinzadeh on X (formerly Twitter) shared on Monday. Moinzadeh wrote on her LinkedIn page that she was let go after working for 2.5 years as a social media manager and editor at Bandcamp.
Rochelle Shipman, whose LinkedIn page describes her as a vinyl representative at Bandcamp, wrote on X on Monday, “3 years at Bandcamp, nearly 100 records & an entire union later, and laid off without so much as a peep from (ex) leadership. Please continue to support artists. Buy music at every turn … Artists first forever.”
Additional reporting by Kristin Robinson.
The music team at TikTok was hit with layoffs last week in an effort to improve efficiency, multiple sources tell Billboard. The cuts affected seven staff members, including senior product strategy & ops lead Kelly Chen and U.S. music partnerships and operations lead Marisa Jeffries. All affected employees were based in the United States. Sources […]
Amid a production halt during a double strike, major talent agency CAA is undergoing a round of layoffs.
About sixty employees are set to be impacted — including agents, executives and support staff — within the next week, a source tells The Hollywood Reporter. The figure is a relatively small percentage of the thousands of staffers that work at the Century City-based representation giant led by Kevin Huvane, Richard Lovett and Bryan Lourd.
Multiple departments had been evaluating staffing levels even prior to when the Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2. When performer’s union SAG-AFTRA joined the strike on July 13, Hollywood settled in to a long summer as the dealmaking ecosystem ground to a halt.
Several talent agencies have cut staff in the ensuing months as the guilds faced off with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios. For instance, Endeavor, the owner of fellow “Big 3” agency WME and fashion-focused IMG, estimated on August 8 that the impact of the actors’ and writers’ strikes would be about $25 million per month in revenue.
Talent and literary agency Verve, which reps many scribes, cut about 60 percent of its assistants and 3 agents in late May. And Big 3 firm UTA had already made a round of cuts, which it described as a single digit percentage of a workforce that totals 2,000 employees, in February.
Hollywood’s agencies went through retrenchment and conducted notable layoffs or furloughs during the COVID-19 shutdowns in the middle of 2020, also at a time of a widespread production halt. At that time, in July 2020, CAA said it cut 90 agents and executives and further furloughed 275 assistants and other staffers.
Since that time, CAA made the most consequential move in the Hollywood talent agency space, acquiring rival firm ICM in a megadeal that closed last June and added 425 of its employees to the payroll, with 105 staffers cut. At the time, the combined company was said to have 3,200 employees in 25 countries.
Deadline earlier reported CAA’s planned cuts on Thursday.
This article was originally published by THR.com.
Swiss-based tech company Utopia Music is undertaking a fresh round of job cuts. In a memo to staff on Friday (July 20), co-founder/interim CEO Mattias Hjelmstedt said the company is closing its research and development offices in the United Kingdom and Finland, resulting in the loss of around 5% of its global workforce.
The closures come less than a week after distribution and music services company Absolute Label Services was reacquired from Utopia by its original owners. Billboard understands that around 25 jobs are being lost as a result of London-based Utopia UK (R&D) Ltd and Helsinki-based Utopia R&D Tech Finland Oy being shuttered.
In the staff memo, Hjelmstedt says the cuts are being made in line with the company’s “shifting focus from hyper-growth to sustainable growth and profitability.” Moving forward, writes Hjelmstedt, Utopia’s office in the Swedish capital city Stockholm — where the majority of its engineers are based — will remain the firm’s main research and development hub as part of “a leaner and more efficient setup.”
Utopia’s 10 other employing divisions or companies are not affected by the cost-cutting measures. They include Proper Music Group, the United Kingdom’s leading independent physical music distributor which provides distribution services for 1,000-plus indie labels and service companies. Also unaffected is Utopia Distribution Services, which in September 2022 acquired the assets of Cinram Novum, one of the United Kingdom’s leading physical home entertainment suppliers that provides warehouse, fulfillment and distribution services to a range of labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and [PIAS].
“While not taken lightly, consolidating our R&D entities is a necessary step,” Hjelmstedt writes, “as it will enable us to more efficiently deliver new products and improve our existing services.” He adds that all impacted employees will be considered for any future openings.
Friday’s announcement marks the third round of layoffs to take place at Utopia in just under nine months. In November, around 230 posts were cut (then representing 20% of the company’s global workforce), followed by a further 100 redundancies in April. High-profile exits in 2023 have included former CEO Markku Mäkeläinen and Roberto Neri, the United Kingdom-based former CEO of Utopia’s Music Services division.
Twelve months ago, when Utopia was still turning heads throughout the industry on the back of a frenetic buying spree that saw it rapidly acquire 15 companies, the firm’s global workforce numbered around 1,200. Sources tell Billboard that following the closure of the London and Helsinki tech divisions – and the exit of a number of staff who were already in the process of leaving – the number of employees will be around 440.
Alongside job cuts, Utopia has offloaded three companies this year, the most recent being Absolute, which it acquired in early 2022. Other divestments in 2023 include U.S.-based music database platform ROSTR and United Kingdom-based publisher Sentric, which in April was sold to French music company Believe in a deal worth €47 million ($51 million).
In February, the Zug, Switzerland-based tech company was hit with a lawsuit from U.S. music technology company SourceAudio over a stalled acquisition deal. According to a complaint filed Feb. 13 in Delaware court, lawyers for California-based SourceAudio claim that Utopia owes the tech company over $37 million for failing to complete an agreed acquisition deal. (Utopia estimates that this will be settled in the next coming weeks.)
Following Friday’s announcement of more job losses, a spokesperson for Utopia said the company was “streamlining its organization to increase efficiency.” Despite the consolidation, Utopia will continue to develop its product offering, said the spokesperson, and its physical distribution business “remains a priority area.”
Read the memo in full below.
Dear colleagues,
2023 has been a year of transformation, optimization, and delivery. We have been shifting focus from hyper-growth to sustainable growth and profitability. We have taken the necessary, and sometimes difficult, decisions to get there. While we see the fruits of our actions taken so far – with more products on the market and increased sales traction – we need to further consolidate our research and development (R&D) organization. The main purpose for this consolidation is streamlining our operations to increase focus on delivering our market-ready products to the music industry.
Moving forward, Utopia R&D Stockholm will continue to be our main R&D hub. Through this concentration we will be able to build on the successes delivered through this entity with a leaner and more efficient setup. As part of this consolidation, we will close down two R&D entities, Utopia UK (R&D) Ltd, and Utopia R&D Tech Finland Oy. This will not impact our other 11 employing entities. Our Finnish and UK R&D offices represent a relatively small footprint in Utopia’s overall R&D teams and we have a very strong R&D office in Stockholm that will continue developing, maintaining, and improving our core products.
Our product offering and promise to deliver world class services to our customers also remains. However, we sadly have to say farewell to some very appreciated colleagues, who have greatly contributed to our mission through their hard work, as a result. I want to express my sincere apologies to those affected and would like to thank every one of you for your hard work – you have greatly contributed to our mission. I trust you to bid the employees who are leaving a heartfelt farewell – they deserve all the respect and support we can give. All impacted employees will of course be considered for any future openings.
I’m extremely proud of all the hard work you have put in so far, and continue to deliver. The output from this last six-week cycle was truly amazing – you keep showing impressive dedication, competence, and passion. I’m convinced that we are fully equipped to continue delivering superior services to the music industry through our current customer offerings; Distribution, Radio Monitoring, TrackNClaim, Enhance & Discover, HeartBeat, and Accelerate. While not taken lightly, consolidating our R&D entities is a necessary step to realize our long-term vision of Fair Pay for Every Play as it will enable us to more efficiently deliver new products and improve our existing services.
Mattias