You may or may not have noticed some music publications going quiet in recent weeks. As avid music press readers, we certainly did, and we wondered what the hell was going on. Turns out, a lot of music writers lost their jobs recently, and all for the same reason.

If you read BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, or Goldmine, you may have thought – correctly – that something was up. These sites are owned by a company called Veeps, and they’ve taken out a broadsword and gutted the various newsrooms.

It’s heavy handed stuff too, with almost all staff at each publication being given the chop earlier in the month. If you want to be double-mad about this, Veeps happen to be in bed with Live Nation. By this point, you have to wonder if they genuinely hate the world of music and the culture that surrounds it.

Veeps was founded in LA, by Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte (alongside Sherry Saeedi and Kyle Heller). Saeedi left the company thanks to the involvement of Live Nation, so at least someone in there had the moral fortitude to stand for something.

Either way, Live Nation and Veeps expanded into media, for which they have now decimated the staff of the publications they now owned.

Publicist Jacob Daneman, speaking of the legendary BrooklynVegan, shared his views on social media, saying: “RIP Brooklyn Vegan. Absolutely bewildering. Thinking of all the great people there and the unparalleled music coverage they’ve done over the years. Utterly unceremonious and moronic actions by Veeps.”

Former BrooklynVegan Senior Editor Andrew Sacher said he and “almost all” of the publication’s staff had been laid off, and editor Bill Pearis said his time at the publication “came to an abrupt end… when I was laid off along with most of the BV staff.”

So, there goes another set of trustworthy voices who really championed the underground scenes and the rest, and the world of the music press suffers another blow thanks to, it turns out, two of Good Charlotte and the Big Business they ended up in bed with.

It’s a sorry state when the press dwindles and the scene is filling up with nepo babies and such. We’re going to need each other as we work out what happens next.