Beatport lay off over 25 staff members, close San Francisco office

Despite EDM being at the very peak of its powers, the world’s most popular EDM-focused download site Beatport – which acted as a launching pad for countless successful artists – has shut its offices in San Francisco, as well as laying off roughly 20 staff members from its Denver office.

Music Week reports the cuts – which include six staff members from San Francisco, and roughly twenty Denver-based engineers – were part of a restructuring brought about by their parent company SFX Entertainment’s recent public float. SFX purchased Beatport in February, and recently acquired the Totem OneLove Group, promoters of Stereosonic and Creamfields, for a reported $75 million. Last week they purchased ticketing company Paylogic.

A statement from Beatport read: “With the additional resources provided by SFX, we are making significant new investments in Beatport and focusing on providing the best possible experience for our users – the DJ, the producer, the labels and the entire Electronic Music Culture community. We have closed our San Francisco office, reorganised our engineering team, and cut some positions in Denver.

“With the recently announced acquisitions of PayLogic and Arc90, this refocus on maximising Beatport as the definitive site for everything related to Electronic Music is indicative of our commitment to igniting the simmering Revolution of this astounding movement, Electronic Music Culture,” said Beatport.