Although completely unrelated to DVD, we thought this might be interesting to you as it gives you a little insight into how rapidly and on what scale things can change in a company like Universal from one day to the other.

Universal has started the greatest restructuring in the history of the entire music industry. According to industry sources, the Universal Music Group is laying off close to 500 employees in the US and releases about 250 artists from their contracts!

Universal is owned by Seagram, just as Polygram is, and as we reported yesterday, Seagram has become the largest music publishers since the acquisition
of Polygram last month. The whole restructuring is part of Seagram’s “bigger” plan to establish themselves as the largest and healthiest music publisher in the industry. With that in mind until the end of the restructuring in July, over 3000 layoffs are expected to create savings of over $300 million per year.