Days after returning Absolute Label Companies to its founders about 17 months after buying the corporate, Utopia Music has introduced yet one more layoff spherical.
Switzerland-based Utopia Music revealed its latest personnel discount in an internally circulated memo and confirmed the less-than-ideal improvement to Digital Music Information. Having launched into a much-publicized shopping for spree in 2021 and 2022, Utopia has thus far in 2023 bought off a number of of those identical companies, amongst them Sentric Music Group, ROSTR, and the aforementioned Absolute.
Accompanying the divestitures – whereas ROSTR’s founders additionally reassumed possession, Utopia bought Sentric to Paris-headquartered Consider, it’s value highlighting – have been a number of layoffs. Previous to as we speak’s headcount cutback, as an illustration, mid-April noticed the troubled music fintech half with about 15 p.c of its world workforce.
Per the talked about memo (which founder Mattias Hjelmstedt penned) and assertion, nonetheless, Utopia’s newest layoffs have resulted from the closure of two analysis and improvement places of work.
“We proceed to run R&D from our most important tech hub, Utopia R&D Stockholm in Sweden, the place our core engineers and platform expertise originate from,” a Utopia spokesperson informed us. “As a part of this consolidation, we are going to shut down two R&D entities, Utopia UK (R&D) Ltd, and Utopia R&D Tech Finland Oy.
“There are not any adjustments to our different 10 (using) entities, and we are going to proceed to develop our present product providing, with extra companies being launched. Bodily distribution stays a precedence space and we are going to proceed to ship world-class companies to our massive music business buyer base,” the consultant completed.
On the time of this piece’s writing, not one of the impacted professionals appeared to have commented publicly on the information through LinkedIn posts, and it was unclear exactly what number of staff members had been affected. However Hjelmstedt’s memo, in addition to emphasizing that “impacted workers will in fact be thought of for any future openings,” touched upon the operational specifics of Utopia at current.
“I’m satisfied that we’re totally geared up to proceed delivering superior companies to the music business by our present buyer choices; Distribution, Radio Monitoring, TrackNClaim, Improve & Uncover, HeartBeat, and Speed up,” reads the related portion of the textual content. “Whereas not taken calmly, consolidating our R&D entities is a obligatory step to appreciate our long-term imaginative and prescient of Truthful Pay for Each Play as it’s going to allow us to extra effectively ship new merchandise and enhance our present companies.”
Utopia retooled ForTunes (which it’s owned since December of 2021) into the famous HeartBeat earlier this month. A “companion app for the music business,” based on higher-ups, HeartBeat has already partnered with buyer relationship administration platform Laylo.