Universal Music Group to Cut ‘Hundreds’ of Staffers

Universal Music Group is reportedly preparing for a round of layoffs that will affect "hundreds" of employees beginning in the first quarter of the year. Sources told Bloomberg that the company's recorded music division will be the most heavily impacted.

What's going on? The layoffs will begin as soon as next week and will be fully complete within the next few months, according to sources. The plan to cut costs was introduced by UMG EVP and CFO Boyd Muir during Universal’s Q3 2023 earnings call, who shared that the company was "conducting a careful review of our cost base, which we will complete over the coming months, and we will update you when appropriate about an anticipated cost-savings program to commence in 2024."

UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge also foreshadowed the upcoming cuts during the company’s October earnings call. “We will cut overhead in order to grow it elsewhere," he said at the time. "We do have experience in managing the business, in managing the teams, and the businesses within that make up the group, and we’ve got a plan.” In his New Year's memo to the company, he added that UMG will "further evolve our organizational structure."

UMG has around 10,000 employees worldwide and the company did not confirm the number of employees that will be affected by the upcoming cuts. At the end of 2022, UMG had a global headcount of 9,992 employees, 9,286 of whom were permanent employees and 706 temporary employees.

What they're saying: “We continue to position UMG to accelerate its leadership in music’s most promising growth areas and drive its transformation to capitalize on them," a spokesperson for UMG said in a statement after the layoffs were confirmed. "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.”