I feel bad for the people but this is just another company trimming the fat to increase their stock price (which worked [1]). I don't see why TechCrunch calls Beatport a startup as it is 10 years old and owned by another company.
Even if the motivation for "looking at the finances" more closely was the fact that SFX is now publicly-traded and has a new set of shareholders to answer to, what's the problem with this? Most companies (established or not) don't have the luxury of indefinitely letting performing parts of their businesses subsidize underperforming parts of their businesses. In many cases, the best and/or only source of needed investment dollars can be found in expense reduction.
As for feeling bad: layoffs are always unfortunate and it's worth noting that, from what I have seen at least, the good times of the past several years have left many, engineers especially, with the mistaken impression that they're impervious to the financial realities of their employers. It's always a good idea to understand the relationship between your role/team and your employer's finances regardless of how valued you believe you are in the org chart.
20 50K salaries multiplied by 5 years is five million dollars in labor, never mind the overhead. If you've burned through that much cash and you're still in business after five years, congratulations. Unicorns aside, it doesn't matter if you're in the red or in the black. You are an established business, and not some fledgling twinkle in an investor's eyes.