The New Year and the closing out of the “old” year always have a lot of news. Some good, some bad. The bad news is the closing of Equity Music Group. According to the news release, it has “suspended operations.” Naturally, everyone hates to see people out of work at this time of year. We can count this among the many, many jobs being lost due to the downturn of the economy.

With Equity Music Group, it has had its share of glory and lumps this past year. The glory was having the hot group, Little Big Town. The lumps really got large when founder/investor/artist Clint Black sued partner Charlie Sussman for a huge amount of money claiming Sussman never discussed the details of Little Big Town’s move to Capitol Records and basically not communicating on important business issues.

As much as we hate to see GM Tim Wipperman, promotion honcho David Haley and the other staffers out of work, this recent event came as no surprise to people in the industry. The press release laid the blame to the economy, but once ex-GM Mike Kraski split, Little Big Town leaving, then the Clint Black lawsuit, the label’s days were numbered. Kraski is now in the artist management business.