Hot on the heels of Lucian Grainge’s new year memo that trumpeted the major as “the most successful company in the history of the music industry”, Universal Music has said it will “create efficiencies” in the coming months following a Bloomberg report that said hundreds of jobs are set to be cut at the company.
In a statement addressing the reported lay-offs, Universal said: “We continue to position UMG to accelerate its leadership in music’s most promising growth areas and drive its transformation to capitalise on them. Over the past several years, we have been investing in future growth – building our e-commerce 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 realising the benefits of our scale".
There have been significant job cuts in the tech sector over the last year, of course, including at digital music businesses, not least Spotify. And there were further redundancies announced just last week at both Google and Amazon. The latter included the news that about 100 jobs will go at audiobook division Audible, while Amazon-owned Twitch is planning to cut 35% of its workforce, or about 500 roles.
In the music industry, both Warner Music and BMG have done some albeit more modest downsizing in the last year. With both those companies - and going by what it says, for Universal too - much of the downsizing seems to be about reducing staffing costs in some parts of the business to enable growth in others.
In his memo to staff last week, Universal boss Lucian Grainge wrote that super-serving superfans and more geographical expansion would be a priority in the year ahead.
He also confirmed that the company would “create efficiencies in other areas of the business” as it further evolved its organisational structure.