Downtown
Downtown-owned CD Baby and Soundrop Lay Off Employees, Citing ‘Economic Conditions’
CD Baby and Soundrop have both laid off employees, citing “economic conditions” and “uncertain times,” according to a company-wide email written by Downtown’s new chief people officer Love Whelchel on Oct. 5. Whelchel started at Downtown just last month. News of the layoffs was first published by Digital Music News. While the outlet reported that 30 employees were let go from the two companies, a spokesperson for CD Baby and Soundrop tells Billboard this figure is incorrect. It remains unclear how many people were laid off from the companies. News of these layoffs arrives about a week after parent company Downtown announced that it would be combining multiple of its businesses to consolidate and streamline its B2B operations under the new monicker Downtown Music. This new one-stop-shop wil...
Hundreds of thousands protest in Myanmar as army faces crippling mass strike
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Myanmar for a ninth day of anti-coup demonstrations on Sunday, as the new army rulers grappled to contain a strike by government workers that could cripple their ability to run the country. People surround a police vehicle as they protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar February 12, 2021 in this still grab obtained by Reuters from a video on February 13, 2021. Trains in parts of the country stopped running after staff refused to go to work, local media reported, while the military deployed soldiers to power plants only to be confronted by angry crowds. A civil disobedience movement to protest against the Feb. 1 coup that deposed the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi started with doctors. It now affects a swa...
U.S. agents search Nashville blast site, seeking clues behind Christmas explosion
Police and federal agents were scouring the charred site of a Christmas Day explosion in Nashville on Saturday, trying to determine how and why a motor home blew up and injured three people in the heart of America’s country music capital. The fiery blast, heard from miles away, destroyed several vehicles, damaged more than 40 businesses and left a trail of glass shards around the area. The motor home, parked on a downtown street of Tennessee’s largest city, exploded at dawn on Friday moments after police responding to reports of gunfire noticed the recreational vehicle and heard an automated message emanating from it warning of a bomb. The means of detonation and whether anyone was inside the RV when it blew up were not immediately known, but investigators were examining what they believed...
