Yesterday EMI Music, the company I work for, restructured and layed off 20% of it's North American workforce. Crap. There's no good way to say that. In Nashville we lost almost 30 people in our company of 200.
I feel like Treebeard, one of the Ents from Lord Of The Rings, when he stumbles out of the forest into a clearing and sees all of his young trees chopped up and lying on the ground, and says, "...many of these trees were my friends...." So sad. Work was just not the same today without them.
Some of them had been working at EMI for 10 to 15 years. Some for just a few months. It was like a tornado coming through... a few people here, a few people there, and then they're gone. It was odd, awkward, and very very foreign. In the midst of it all I almost feel guilty still being here. I just happened to get hired into a division that was growing in sales two years ago, so here I am. As much as work frustrates me many days, I feel very blessed to still have my job.
The fact that the music industry is suffering, and that people are illegally downloading music, became very real yesterday. The growth in sales at services like iTunes is not countering the decline in CD sales. People are getting their music off the internet and burning it from their friends CDs.
And yesterday it cost 30 of my friends their jobs.
Today you should listen to...
Future Of Forestry "You And I"
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3 comments:
It's so sad. You can buy CDs for pretty cheap and iTunes is great. Why can't people just do the right thing and pay for their music?
Yeah...sorry you had to see that. It's got to be alot more real when you're in the industry like that.
And don't kid your readers, Burnshead...you just wanted an excuse to refer to yourself as Treebeard.
Matt,
I think you are the modern-day Treebeard. However, since you handle music I will call you CD-goatee.
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