So, as we mentioned yesterday, the vast majority of the UK workforce at former indie label V2 have been made redundant. Some or all of the redundancy letters were reportedly distributed on Friday, with affected employees clearing their desks at the indie's Fulham offices on Wednesday.
Just five of V2's 45ish employees will definitely stay with the label when it becomes an imprint of Universal's Mercury division. According to Music Week, CEO Tony Harlow and Head Of New Media & Business Development Beth Appleton are among the five. MD David Steele is not.
It is unclear if those five will form a V2 team at Mercury, or whether they will simply take roles within the Universal empire with V2 essentially becoming a badge that goes on the back of Mercury-released Stereophonics albums.
From what David Steele has told Music Week it seems the latter is most likely the case. He says V2 execs had hoped Universal might use the former indie as an 'incubator label' to sign and develop new acts that may then be promoted up to one of the major's bigger labels. But that is seemingly not Universal's intent.
Some say the major is more interested in using V2's various alliances with smaller independents through the Co-operative Music venture for finding and developing new talent, while absorbing the more profitable parts of V2's roster and catalogue into Mercury. That will mean that V2 will cease to exist as a live entity, while the vast majority of its current roster will be quietly dropped in the coming months. Maybe even tomorrow. We'll see I guess.
Given that V2 US had already been closed down by its new owners Sheridan Square, and with the consensus being that the indie's other European outposts, part of the Universal deal, will also be swallowed up by the major, it seems that after ten years Richard Branson's dream of creating a second Virgin Records is now well and truly over - and, unlike with V1, his creation won't live on under new ownership, except perhaps as a badge on certain Mercury releases. For those of us who have followed V2 from the first ever Stereophonics press conference, it's the end of an era.