Maverick Records and Atlantic Records, two labels owned by AOL Time Warner Inc., said Monday they have cut more than 30 jobs combined over the past week.
A spokesman for Warner Music said there had been 16 job cuts at Maverick Records over the last week, while Atlantic has also cut about 15 jobs.
These latest job cuts come as industry watchers speculate that AOL Time Warner is looking to cut deeper in the music division after a massive cost-cutting campaign following the merger of AOL and Time Warner, which resulted in the elimination of over 600 jobs over the past year.
Warner Music employed about 13,000 people before the cost-cutting plans were announced in January.
Industry insiders have speculated there will be cuts at Warner’s London-Sire Records, a small label run by Seymour Stein, who is credited with discovering stars including Madonna.
A spokesman declined to comment on the speculation of further significant cuts, but others in the company said the latest cuts were the results of independent decisions made by the management of each label.
“I think this is the kind of annual trimming that all the music companies have been doing for the past few years,” said one record label executive familiar with the move.
Maverick was launched as a $10 million joint venture with Madonna in 1992, but the label has reportedly lost money lately and has had few hits since Alanis Morissette’s 1995 blockbuster album, “Jagged Little Pill.”
