i think the saddest part of these layoffs is that people assume everyone working at a record label is some corporate villain. a lot of these people genuinely love music and spend their time helping artists build careers. but the music market is changing, companies are under pressure to operate efficiently, and management teams make decisions about where to cut costs and where to invest. schumpeter’s creative destruction theory actually talks about how industries change when old business models are disrupted by new ones. unfortunately, the people caught in the middle are real people with bills, families and careers. and for some artists, the person who just lost their job was the only person inside that company consistently fighting for them.