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On the heels of a story in the current Private Eye that workers at IPC, publishers of Uncut and NME, are facing a year of frozen wages comes news that 8 per cent of the staff is being let go as part of parent Time Inc's canning of 500 jobs globally.
No word yet on if the job losses will directly hit the music magazines.
HMV is merging the marketing departments for Waterstones and HMV. Because, frankly, selling books is almost identical to running a youth club, right?
Still, Gennaro Castaldo is keen to calm down fears this might be an 'efficiency' measure:
Gennaro Castaldo, spokesperson for HMV, said: “I'm pleased to say this is not about cuts or job losses - it's about finding a better way of working together as brands to achieve synergies and to make the most of the resources available to us.Mmm. Brand synergies. And, you know, if someone loses their job, well, that's only more or less screwing up their lives. More or less.
“There are potentially a couple of vacancies or new positions, while one role may go, so there are more or less just as many heads supporting both brands as there were before - just under 50 in total.”
Rhino Records - the catalogue arm of Warners - is having one of those restructuring that sounds like it'll wind up without much structure left. Variety is reporting up to 40 redundancies:
A statement from Rhino cited a "fundamental transformation of the physical new release and catalog business" as a reason for the cuts.
Company said Rhino will evolve into an entity that "handles WMG's global digital catalog initiatives, film, TV, vidgame and commercial licensing, and name and likeness representation for legendary artists."
I think we should take this as a sign that maybe the strategy of using music to drive MySpace's growth is failing a little: the company is laying off 30% of its staff.
This, though, should not be seen as a bad thing. Oh, no no:
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta.
MTV is axing 10% of its UK workforce under orders from Viacom.
That's going to be tricky for the company at a time when it believes its future is in 'made' programmes rather than showing videos, output which requires rather more staff members than fewer. Unless, of course, they just lob on lots more of the dismal American programming.
As CBS struggles to make money from the internet, it's using 'select all-delete' to its expensive buy-in Last FM. Twenty-ish staff are being sent to the dole queues, mostly from the London office, reports TechCrunch.
One of the many touted iTunes killers, RealNetwork's Rhapsody service has been finding the battle against Apple something of a struggle; it's merging with MTV's Urge and, as a result, is laying off staff. Rhapsody America, the service which will emerge from the merger, doesn't look likely to have any more impact than the two from which it is hewn.
The inevitable human cost of shift to digital distribution: Sony BMG are losing 25 staff from roles connected with physical distribution.
