Warner Music Group‘s Warner Music Baltics office in Tallinn, Estonia is being shuttered.
Warner Music Group expanded its operations in the Baltics by opening the office in 2020.
Warner’s move into Estonia in 2020 marked the first time that Warner Music Baltics, which operates as part of Warner Music Finland, had a physical base in the region.
MBW understands that Warner’s operations for the Baltics will now be handled from Helsinki and Stockholm.
The label also built a local roster of artists in the market over the past three years.
Sources familiar with the situation said that six local artists in Estonia will be released from their contracts, but that all current creative commitments are being honored by Warner Music before that happens.
Local artists signed to the label include Arop, Andreas, Gameboy Tetris, Kirot, Karl Killing and Liis Lemsalu.
MBW also understands that all of Warner’s Estonia-based employees, around seven, are being let go as a result of the office closure.
News of the Estonian office closure follows last week’s news of Warner Music Group-owned Atlantic Music Group making around two dozen layoffs.
The news was announced in a memo sent by Atlantic Music Group Chairman and CEO, Julie Greenwald, to the company’s staff last Monday (February 26), and obtained by MBW.
Warner announced last month that it is laying off around 600 staff, or about 10% of its workforce – a move that Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said on the company’s earnings call is part of an efficiency drive that will save the company $200 million by September 2025.
The majority of these layoffs will take place within WMG’s ‘owned and operated’ media properties, some of which the company plans to sell.
“We’re in an exclusive process for the potential sale of the news entertainment websites Uproxx and HipHopDX, with more to say on that soon,” Kyncl told analysts on the call earlier this month.Music Business Worldwide