Mass layoffs have hit four music publications — Revolver, Alternative Press, BrooklynVegan and Goldmine — following reports that Veeps, the livestreaming company owned by Live Nation, has cut most of the staff across the portfolio. The news broke on Wednesday, August 5.
In the aftermath, former Project M Group and Veeps employee Christopher Enriquez went public on Instagram with allegations about his own time at the company, saying he was verbally harassed by senior management including Joel, Benji and Josh Madden, that confidential medical information he had shared only with HR was discussed by management, and that he was made miserable deliberately until he resigned so the company would avoid paying severance.
None of these allegations has been proven and no one named has publicly responded. Enriquez left the company around 18 months ago and now works at New Noise Magazine.
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On today’s Metal Breakdown Daily, Scott Penfold talks about the week music journalism lost four of its biggest names — what actually went, why it should feel familiar to anyone who’s watched their local paper get hollowed out, and the one thing readers can genuinely do about it. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and take the show with you.
Let’s start with a disclosure, because it matters.
Loaded Radio is independent, and Revolver, Alternative Press and BrooklynVegan are competitors. There is a version of this article that treats their collapse as good news for us.
This isn’t it. When outlets like these get hollowed out, the whole ecosystem gets smaller — including for the bands, and including for us.
What Happened
On Wednesday, August 5, reports emerged that Veeps — the livestreaming company owned by Live Nation — had made mass layoffs across the music media brands in its portfolio.
Four titles were affected:
Revolver. First published in spring 2000, relaunched as a metal magazine in autumn 2001 with Slipknot on the cover. Circulation around 100,000. For twenty-five years it was the American heavy music magazine of record.
Alternative Press. Founded in 1985 by Mike Shea, who started it in his mother’s house in Aurora, Ohio and handed out the first issues by hand at Cleveland shows. The name wasn’t about alternative rock — it meant an alternative to the local press. It stopped printing in late 2025 and had been operating digitally.
BrooklynVegan. Started as a blog and became one of the most influential music sites in the United States, particularly for underground and independent artists who had nowhere else to be covered.
Goldmine. Publishing since 1974. Fifty-two years of record collecting, archival music writing and reissue coverage that essentially no one else does.
That’s more than 140 years of combined institutional history, and most of the people who carried it were let go inside a week.
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What A Former Employee Is Alleging
In the days after the news broke, Christopher Enriquez — who worked at Project M Group and then Veeps, and had been with the company since 2017 — posted publicly about his own experience.
His allegations, all of which remain unproven:
- That he was verbally harassed by Joel, Benji and Josh Madden along with other senior management
- That confidential medical information, which he says he disclosed only to the company’s HR department, was discussed by management
- That rather than fire him, management deliberately made his working life difficult until he resigned, so the company would not have to pay severance
- That a former colleague later apologised to him and confirmed this, after that colleague was themselves let go
Enriquez left roughly 18 months ago. He now works at New Noise Magazine, and he had good things to say about them — describing an owner who cares about underground music and about staff.
None of this has been substantiated, and nobody named has responded publicly. We’ll report it if they do.
We’re also not going to speculate beyond what he said. He raised his own medical history because he says it was used against him — that’s his to disclose, not ours to explore, and we’ll leave it at the level he put it.
Why This Should Feel Familiar
Here’s the part that makes this bigger than a music story.
If you live in the United States or Canada, there is a decent chance your local newspaper has been through some version of the last week.
Bought by a chain. Then a bigger chain. Then a private equity fund. Staff cut, then cut again. The city hall reporter gone. The court reporter gone. The photographer gone. What’s left is a masthead you recognise, publishing wire copy and aggregated posts, with nobody left who actually knows the town.
Roughly 2,900 American newspapers have closed since 2005, and the country has lost around two-thirds of its newspaper journalists in that time. That’s not a music industry problem. That’s the model.
What happened at Revolver and Alternative Press this week is that same machine, applied to a smaller and more specialised corner of the world. Acquire the brand because the brand has value. Discover that the value was the people. Remove the people anyway, because the brand can be run for less.
The name survives. What made it worth something doesn’t.
What Actually Gets Lost
Be specific about this, because “music journalism” sounds abstract until you break it down.
Somebody has to be in the room when a band nobody has heard of plays to forty people. Somebody has to listen to two hundred albums to tell you about the six that matter. Somebody has to sit with an artist for an hour and ask the question that gets a real answer instead of a press-release answer.
That work is slow, badly paid and almost never glamorous. It’s how bands get discovered, how scenes get documented, and how anyone ten years from now will know what 2026 sounded like.
We use it ourselves constantly. Go through our own archive and you’ll find Revolver cited as the source for Charlie Benante on Lars Ulrich, and for Philip Anselmo on Rob Halford, and dozens more besides. When an outlet like that gets hollowed out, everyone downstream loses a source — including the sites that will cheerfully write about its downfall.
The Part You Can Actually Do Something About
Not much about this is in your hands. This bit is.
Subscribe to something. If there’s an outlet whose work you rely on, pay for it. A few dollars a month is the difference between a writer being able to do this and not.
Turn the ad blocker off on sites you actually read. Independent outlets live on that revenue and there isn’t a backup plan.
Share the article, not just the screenshot. When you post a quote as an image, the writer gets nothing.
Buy the merch, the magazine, the physical thing. It’s the only revenue that can’t be taken away by an algorithm change.
Follow the writers, not just the outlets. The people laid off this week are still journalists. They’ll turn up somewhere else — some already have — and the fastest way to make sure their next thing survives is to be there when it launches.
To Anyone Who Got That Email
You did work that mattered, for money that didn’t reflect it, because you cared about music.
The bands you covered before anyone else are still going because you covered them. The scenes you documented exist on the record because you wrote them down. That doesn’t get undone by a spreadsheet decision made by people who never sat in a venue at midnight waiting to interview a support act.
This scene is genuinely worse off without you working in it, and we hope you land somewhere that knows what it’s got.
TL;DR
- What happened: mass layoffs across Revolver, Alternative Press, BrooklynVegan and Goldmine, reported August 5, 2026
- Who owns them: the titles sit under Veeps, the livestreaming company owned by Live Nation
- The scale: more than 140 years of combined publishing history between the four outlets — Goldmine since 1974, Alternative Press since 1985, Revolver since 2000, BrooklynVegan since the early 2000s
- The allegations: former employee Christopher Enriquez has publicly alleged verbal harassment by senior management including the Madden brothers, misuse of confidential medical information he says he shared only with HR, and being pushed to resign so the company could avoid severance
- Status of those allegations: unproven. No one named has responded publicly
- Where he is now: Enriquez left around 18 months ago and works at New Noise Magazine
- The wider context: roughly 2,900 US newspapers have closed since 2005, with around two-thirds of newspaper journalism jobs lost in the same period. This is the same pattern in a smaller sector
FAQ
What happened to Revolver, Alternative Press and BrooklynVegan?
All three, along with Goldmine, were hit by mass layoffs reported on August 5, 2026. The titles sit under Veeps, the livestreaming company owned by Live Nation, and most staff across the portfolio were reportedly let go.
Who owns Revolver and Alternative Press?
The publications sit within a portfolio under Veeps, which is owned by Live Nation. Alternative Press has been managed by MDDN, the company associated with Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte.
What did the former employee allege?
Christopher Enriquez, who worked at Project M Group and Veeps from 2017 until roughly 18 months ago, publicly alleged that he was verbally harassed by senior management including Joel, Benji and Josh Madden, that confidential medical information he had shared only with HR was discussed by management, and that he was pushed into resigning so the company would avoid paying severance. The allegations are unproven and no one named has responded publicly.
Are these magazines shutting down completely?
No closure has been announced. The reporting describes mass layoffs rather than the titles ceasing publication — meaning the brands are expected to continue with substantially reduced staff.
How can readers support music journalism?
Subscribe to outlets you read regularly, disable ad blockers on sites you rely on, share full articles rather than screenshots, buy physical products where they exist, and follow individual writers so you find their work wherever they land next.
Four outlets, more than 140 years of history, and most of the people who built them gone in a week. If a music magazine or site ever changed what you listened to, name it in the comments — those writers deserve to know it landed.
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The post Revolver, Alternative Press And BrooklynVegan Were Gutted In A Single Week, And A Former Employee Has Gone Public With Serious Allegations About Management appeared first on Loaded Radio.