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It seems that when it comes to the rock & metal world, almost all the big stories of 2012 have been sad ones, such as the news of Jim Marshalls passing or the cancellation of Sonisphere Knebworth 2012. This news however really takes the proverbial biscuit, as the incredibly sad news has reached us this afternoon that Roadrunner Records‘ UK offices are to close in a few weeks time, with cutbacks being reported across the label worldwide. At the time of writing this there have been rumours that the German and Canadian Roadrunner offices are also set to close, and we will confirm or correct this as soon as we can get confirmation one way or the other.
Update – We can confirm that the Canadian offices are also being shut down, and we think all the offices apart from the US office have been scheduled to close down, again further updates when we can confirm this.
Rocksins’ have worked with the team at Roadrunner UK almost from day one of the site starting and they’ve always been nothing but friendly and hugely helpful to us so we would like to send our love and sympathy to the entire team, safe in the knowledge that they are among the very best in the business at what they do so hopefully they’ll all move to success elsewhere.
Needless to say, this is a huge blow for the rock & metal industry across all of Europe. More news on this subject as soon as we get it here at Rocksins.
Second Update – Billboard.biz are reporting that Roadrunner UK will actually continue to exist in some form, as will the Canadian office. The only office to be closed entirely is the Dutch office in the Netherlands. Whether this is accurate or not remains to be seen, as everyone Rocksins’ knows in the UK office has been made redundant, and the head of Roadrunner Canada Rose Slanic earlier tweeted saying today was her last day in the job after seven years. Various members of the US team have also been laid off, but this does not including their digital director Jeremy Rosen (who runs the US Roadrunner twitter account at @rrusa) as we have confirmed with him first hand via twitter that he’s still employed). We’re pleased Jeremy still has a job, we just wish a few of his British colleagues did too. We will of course continue to update this story as new developments become available.
Sucks, but it is the nature of the industry. Warner Music buys them out given how successful RR had become, then they get rid of most of the staff that made them successful to begin with. Yeah, makes PERFECT sense of course.
How this impacts bands like Rush, Dream Theater or even a newer band like Gojira remains to be seen, but I would not be incredibly optimistic if I were them.
Maybe all music, including Metal needs to just be sold via places like Bandcamp. That in theory could be the best solution, however, that isn't going to happen for many years still.
The corporate vampires still hold enough cards.