Veeps cuts editorial staff at music sites BrooklynVegan and Revolver

Veeps has cut editorial staff across five music publications it owns: BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, Goldmine and sister site Metal Edge. Music Business Worldwide reported that the company cut seven employees as part of a restructuring, leaving about 25 editorial staff across the group. The titles remain active and continue to publish, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

Veeps is the ticketed livestream service Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte founded in 2017 with co-founders Sherry Saeedi and Kyle Heller, in which Live Nation has held a majority stake since January 2021. The Maddens acquired Alternative Press, the Cleveland rock magazine founded in 1985, around 2020, and folded BrooklynVegan, Revolver, Goldmine and Metal Edge into Veeps in 2025. Revolver launched in 2000 and has covered hard rock and metal since 2001; Goldmine has served record collectors since 1974; and BrooklynVegan, an indie and rock site founded in New York in 2004 by Dave Levine, also owns the metal site Invisible Oranges.

Publicist Jacob Daneman posted about the cuts on X, writing "RIP Brooklyn Vegan. Absolutely bewildering... Utterly unceremonious and moronic actions by Veeps." Pitchfork subsequently reported the layoffs as "mass," saying emails to BrooklynVegan staff bounced back except for founder Dave Levine's.

The Veeps cuts extend a run of music companies shrinking or dropping the editorial titles they own even as their wider businesses grow: Warner Music Group has offloaded outlets including Uproxx and HipHopDX under CEO Robert Kyncl, who has said the changes would free up money to invest in music, and Sony's The Orchard cut nearly all staff at the metal sites Metal Injection and MetalSucks in April.

Live Nation itself reported record Q2 numbers on July 30, including net income of $403 million, up 33 percent year over year, and event-related deferred revenue of $6.4 billion, a record for the company. It sold more than 143 million tickets through mid-July, over 14 million ahead of the prior year's pace. "In a world of endless screens and AI-generated everything, the one thing that can't be copied is being there," CEO Michael Rapino said in the earnings release, adding that fans "keep choosing to be in the room" with touring artists.