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Music Media Businesses The Almighty Buck Your Rights Online

New Head of EMI Says 'Embrace Digital Music or Die' 176

Posted by Zonk from the bit-of-a-hostage-situation dept.
no0b writes "Guy Hands is the new head of EMI, Britain's largest music publisher. Hands has come out publicly with a statement warning the industry against something music listeners have probably understood for some time. In the words of the Telegraph article, 'the industry will not survive if it continues to rely on CD sales alone.' More from the piece: 'With both new and established acts now capable of making money without the backing of a big company, McGee says record labels are being left out of the loop. He scoffs at their efforts to make up lost ground by developing into "multimedia entertainment companies that can manage bands and share in live income". But try they must. Revenues from record sales in Britain have dropped by more than £130m since 2004. The true cost to the industry could be far greater. TNS, the market researcher, looked at the spending habits of file-sharers between 2003 and 2005 and estimated a £1bn loss to the country in retail spend.'"
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New Head of EMI Says 'Embrace Digital Music or Die' More

New Head of EMI Says 'Embrace Digital Music or Die'

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  • He needs to say it like George Carlin did:

    "Embrace digital music...or DIIIIIIIIEEE"
  • How come? They are doing nothing and getting profits from that. How can they not survive? They wanted to say: Digital music will bring even more profits.

    • They are doing nothing and getting profits from that.

      They put up capital at their own risk to invest in artists. They create the infrastructure needed to create all kinds of music. They have the connections to bring together creative minds to patch up holes in individual artists' skills. They market the music nationally and sometimes internationally, to make the most of it's capitalist potential, with the side effect of giving many, many people the opportunity of listening to it. They have the tools and cap

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @01:29PM (#20889095)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Radiohead provided the inspiration (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Foobar of Borg ( 690622 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @01:59PM (#20889311)

      Radiohead were signed to EMI, and now they've decided to go it alone and release their new album online, at a price the fans agree on. Could this be what caused this exec to sound the alarm?
      Well, in the sense that Radiohead was able to finally roust them from their slumber and scream "The building is on fire, you lazy bastards!", then perhaps. But this has been going on for a long time now. Hell, it's not even new. I remember when VCR's came out and they said the same thing. Also, they started releasing Betamax copies of movies like Star Wars for $100 (and this is in the 80's, so about $200 today). Of course, everyone simply signed up at a video rental club and acquired their own backup copy from the one they rented. Eventually, prices dropped to where people would actually be willing to buy an original copy.

      • Also, they started releasing Betamax copies of movies like Star Wars for $100 (and this is in the 80's, so about $200 today). Of course, everyone simply signed up at a video rental club and acquired their own backup copy from the one they rented. Eventually, prices dropped to where people would actually be willing to buy an original copy.

        I'm old enough to remember the 1980s quite well. I remember that even though my family had a VHS machine, prices for buying movies on VHS started at $80, and most were in

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Digz ( 90264 )
          The first one I remember was Top Gun [wikipedia.org]. It had the Pepsi commercial at the beginning (which I've always believed was the first time that was done) and was the first VHS tape I saw in the stores under $30.

          Of course, there could have been something earlier - but that's the first one I remember.

      • Also, they started releasing Betamax copies of movies like Star Wars for $100 (and this is in the 80's, so about $200 today).

        Lucas vowed to never release to the video market. He changed his mind about 6 years later when the pirate copies were everywhere. Raises hand.. I had my copy about 4 years before the official release. The companies did what they always do, throw out a few test crumbs to see if the model will work. Having been in the middle of those days, I remember wonderful titles such a Barbare
    • Sound the alarm? Been asleep for a while or what...?

      The alarm went off more than ten years ago when Apple and Tower Records courted each other to sell music online. Apple wanted to supply the hardware/software and Tower planned to run the online store. Tower had the credit card backend and access to the MUSE database.
    • Is "killing the music industry" good or bad for musicians and society at large? Radiohead made their decision. More to follow. Suicide is always the preferred strategy for creative fields.

  • Too Little Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @01:30PM (#20889101) Journal
    The record industry has spent decades reaping vast profits, often screwing over artists in the process. That business model is now dying, I think this is all too little too late. In the long-run why would artists want to sign contracts with record companies when they market the music themselves?

    Have fun with those lawsuits, they're your swan song, record companies.

    • Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thatskinnyguy ( 1129515 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @02:17PM (#20889461)

      In the long-run why would artists want to sign contracts with record companies when they market the music themselves?
      Sure when bands turn into household names. But the unknowns who lack the resources to promote themselves on a national/global level need a record company with resources to do so. Sure there are things that small bands can do to reach a global audience. But when was the last time you heard of a band selling-out a stadium that had a popular MySpace profile and no record deal?

      • Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @02:23PM (#20889503) Journal

        Sure when bands turn into household names. But the unknowns who lack the resources to promote themselves on a national/global level need a record company with resources to do so. Sure there are things that small bands can do to reach a global audience. But when was the last time you heard of a band selling-out a stadium that had a popular MySpace profile and no record deal?


        They need a marketing firm, or hell, someone willing to put a link to their MP3s from a popular site. I could see a guy like David Bowie popping a link to a band he thinks is great on a site where he's putting out his own MP3s.

        • Re:Too Little Too Late (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Telvin_3d ( 855514 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @03:21PM (#20889995)
          In theory, this is how the music industry is supposed to/used to/sometimes does work. Someone who is in charge of the money side of getting the music made (dedicated producer, one of the artists, it depends) hears some new band and thinks, hey, I like that. It's kind of cool. So, they go to the band and in exchange for a cut of the proceeds they give them a chance to get better known. This might be letting them open for shows, collaborating on a song or two, producing a CD, whatever.

          Then the new band either takes off or not. If they do, a few years down the line, they hear someone know and the cycle repeats.
          Right now, the section of the industry that has this working best is the rap industry. For all their other faults, they are really good at bringing in new talent(?). You can see it if you look at most rap artists on Wikipedia. Their history goes "was discovered by.." who in turn "was discovered by..." and so on.

          I think you can judge the health of any section of the music business based on the percentage of the artists who got their starts playing small gigs until someone bigger gave them a shot.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mpe ( 36238 )
          They need a marketing firm, or hell, someone willing to put a link to their MP3s from a popular site. I could see a guy like David Bowie popping a link to a band he thinks is great on a site where he's putting out his own MP3s.

          Not unlike a tour having one or more "support bands".
      • There should be EMI lite, where lots of artist can get a modicum of promotion in the right places to make a name for themselves. Instead those same artists unable to even get in the door of a major label (because they don't like licking asses or write totally crap songs) go to DIY Records and start making a name for themselves that way.

        The bottom line is if a piece of music kicks ass enough it'll rise through all the shit and become a shining star, but unfortunately a lot of this awesome music never even

        • The bottom line is if a piece of music kicks ass enough it'll rise through all the shit and become a shining star, but unfortunately a lot of this awesome music never even makes if off the hard drive.

          In a perfect world that ought to be how it works, but in reality the record companies seem to prefer creating artists rather than finding and nurturing them. In a perfect world, Britney Spears would be working in a women's clothing store, but in the world of the record company, someone whose vocal performances

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mpe ( 36238 )
            In a perfect world, Britney Spears would be working in a women's clothing store,

            Or maybe sharing a prison cell with Paris Hilton.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Original Replica ( 908688 )
        But the unknowns who lack the resources to promote themselves on a national/global level need a record company with resources to do so.

        The same could be said about any other fledgling business. The steps to national or global success are gonna be the same. Start locally and deliver a good product. Get a loyal fan base going and then grow into a regional band. Keep making good music. When you've been making good music for a decade or three, then you will be able to stadiums the way the Rolling Stones or U2
      • Sure when bands turn into household names. But the unknowns who lack the resources to promote themselves on a national/global level need a record company with resources to do so. Sure there are things that small bands can do to reach a global audience. But when was the last time you heard of a band selling-out a stadium that had a popular MySpace profile and no record deal?

        Thats the thing, there needs to arise a true competitor to the labels. The labels themselves are basically functioning as a illegal cart

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mpe ( 36238 )
          As artists.. they've sort of scammed most artists into getting into the "get rich or die trying" mentality.

          This is definitly not an exclusive or either...

      • see: Phish (Score:3, Insightful)

        by opencity ( 582224 )
        Sold out stadiums. Had a record deal as a side project. Also Dave Mathiews. Anyone remember the Grateful Dead (man)?
        Not a fan of above, don't mind early Dead, but I'm just sayin ... Later, see: Wilco. Anybody who ever ran a minor label will tell you promotion is almost always a waste of money. Too much noise out there. It was like political contributions. Unless you came in at the highest level, full pages in Rolling Stone (and that conincidental long story in the next issue), you were wasting your money.

        Th
      • I'm not sure HOW the labels are marketing their wares except by puting them on the radio and puting them in their distribution catalogs.

        A lot of teens now just surf around MySpace and the like for new music. I really don't see why the label is of a benefit, definitely not one where the label takes an 80% cut.

  • 130 million is nothing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Sunday October 07, 2007 @01:30PM (#20889103)
    In the UK we're struggling from huge consumer debt and massive house prices, 130 million can be the loss due to people not bothering to buy CDs simply because they need to pay their mortgage and debt off.

    If the music companies were feeling the pinch they wouldn't be making expensive music videos.
  • just die irregardless of digital music. As marketing shifts to the web, eventually no band will need these barnacles.

  • That's a 1bn GAIN to the country. (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seriously, the music industry are gross committers of the broken window fallacy - that we should go around smashing windows so glaziers are well-paid. If people get something cheap or free, they're better off. All human progess corresponds to greater economic efficiency. Intellectual monopoly rights are hangovers from before 20th century economic science proved they're a spectacularly bad idea.
    • Quite right.

      TNS, the market researcher, looked at the spending habits of file-sharers between 2003 and 2005 and estimated a £1bn loss to the country in retail spend.

      No, that's a £1bn loss to the music industry. If I download an album, and allowing for the sake of argument that I would otherwise have bought it rather than just doing without, I'm not going to put that money under the bed. I'll spend it on something else. The country loses no retail spend at all, it just shifts to a sector tha

    • You do realize that's not what the broken window theory actually is?

  • EMI gets it... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jawtheshark ( 198669 ) * <slashdot@nosPAm.jawtheshark.com> on Sunday October 07, 2007 @01:41PM (#20889193) Homepage Journal

    At least in my opinion. I stopped buying iTunes songs that were protected after that EMI and Apple introduced the Plus songs. If it isn't plus, I won't buy it. That simple. I have a playlist called "To Buy" in iTunes. It contains links to songs I'd like to buy but that aren't Plus. I review them from time to time if anything has changed. Never happened, tough shit for them. If I find a Plus song that I like, I buy the whole album, just to support the idea.

    All songs before I started boycotting non-Plus songs, have been cracked with Hymn.

    I don't want to do illegal downloading, besides it's a pain in the neck. Give me an easy way to download and honest prices, and I'll be happy. I can't be alone.

    • My biggest beef is with the price of the tracks. $1.29 for a track is way too much. Even the $10.99 for the album is too much, especially considering there is no distribution chain, and no physical product. For me, eMusic offers a sane price. They have a subscription which forces a minimum spending limit, but I'd rather have a minimum spending limit of $10 per month, and only pay $0.30 for a track, than have to pay $1.29 cents a track. Even if I only downloaded 10 tracks on a $10 per month account, I'd st
    • I've done the same. I bought a few tracks from iTunes before the DRM-free, to encourage Internet distribution. I then stopped, because the DRM was stopping me from playing the tracks on my Nokia phone. I started again with Plus, and have bought more music on that so far than I bought music in total last year. And, since I only buy complete albums (if an artist can't produce a complete album without filler, they aren't worth my time to listen to), it's exactly the same price.
  • In an Alternate Reality(Score:4, Interesting)
    by Hangtime (19526) on Friday December 12, @01:21PM (#7702447)
    (http://slashdot.org/)
    (AP) Paris - 12/12/2003 10:53 AM
    Vivendi Universal today was among the host of media companies with record company subsidiaries reporting record profits for the third quarter. Jean-Marie Messier, CEO of Vivendi, attributed the stellar quarter to the company's partnership with the Napster Inc. Napster, a software program used to share and download music, started out as a way to pira

  • Well, what did they expect? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @02:03PM (#20889339) Homepage

    It took the recording industry an amazingly long time to figure this out.

    On top of their distribution problem, the recording industry has other problems. The rock music part of the industry is endlessly recycling decades-old music. The hip-hop/rap/urban component has bands with a very short commercial lifespan. (Rap band members tend to get shot, too, but that's a separate problem.) Folk is dead. Classical is tiny. Country really isn't that big; the Dixie Chicks are more successful since they quit country.

    The top two stories on Billboard this week are about litigation, not music.

    Fundamental problem: the industry spends far more on promotion than on making the stuff. Any business in that position can be undercut on price.

    • It was Joni Mitchell who once observed that the guys running the record company were always greedy bastards, but at least they used to be greedy bastards who liked music. Listen to some of the pure crap coming out of the record companies these days and one can only assume that these guys could give two shits about music.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by robkill ( 259732 )
      Folk isn't dead, it has just gone independent of the major labels. Many artists either have their own label, or record for small labels like Compass, Waterbug, Red House, Gadfly, or Rounder. The economics of the big labels just don't work well for smaller, independent artists. Labels will often dictate the terms of recording to smaller artists, forcing them to spend more money to do it the label's way rather than the artist's way. Artists on their own label usually make more money (better budget contro

  • FINALLY! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Sunday October 07, 2007 @02:09PM (#20889407) Homepage Journal
    At least someone has seen the light! :') I'm moved.

    If EMI does this well, i might buy a song from them.
    • Have you bought any of their DRM-free songs from iTunes yet? If you want to encourage more labels to ditch DRM, that would be a good place to start. If Apple can say to the other labels 'EMI are selling more tracks than you, without DRM' then it would have a lot of impact.

  • Here's how they can survive. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @02:19PM (#20889479)
    1. Offer unencumbered mp3/flac/ogg/whatever downloads as their primary product at a reasonable price. This is below $1/song.
    2. Tell the customer exactly where their money goes: "Out of every download, $.30 goes to the band, $.10 goes to the people who operated the recording equipment..." People will buy music from bands they like if they know they're actually supporting the band.
    3. Save money by cutting marketing bullshit. Market music by selling *good* music, not by convincing 16-year-olds that they'll be cool if they listen to XYZ.
    4. Diversify. Rather than trying to "produce" some canned pop "product" that they can sell to everyone, recognize that people's music tastes are often pretty eclectic, and their catalog needs to match that.
    5. Stop trying to make obscene profits by underhanded dealings, and be happy with a sustainable business. Recognize that you're a middleman, and that you succeed by being as transparent as possible.
    6. Cut the compression bullshit. If I want my music to sound louder I'll turn up my speakers, thanks.
    7. Operate anonymous tip jars with a known cut (65% to the artist/35% to us, or whatever), and encourage people to download music via bittorrent or whatever and then donate to the artist. People will use them.
    • I'm adding your post to my blog. This is a very good summary.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mc moss ( 1163007 )
      The problem is, marketing the next pop sensation or fad (such as emo or "gangsta" rap) to 16 year-olds is pretty much a guaranteed way to reap in huge profits since they have so much disposable income (the parents take care of necessities) and are feared that they won't fit in or be cool if they don't like what's popular and what they're peers like. I found that people that have a more varied taste tend to find the kind of music they like whether it is a independent record shop or online.

    • Re:Here's how they can survive. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by The One and Only ( 691315 ) * <[ten.hclewlihp] [ta] [lihp]> on Sunday October 07, 2007 @03:16PM (#20889951) Homepage
      3 would reduce sales, 4 is a prescription for losing money, 6 is the exact opposite of what most people want, and 7 is a recipe for not making any money at all. Do you honestly think we would be stuck with crappy pop acts if they didn't make money for the record companies? The reason mass media is so awful isn't because of some conspiracy to dumb down the populace--it's because the populace is already dumb enough to want those things.
    • Dude ! You are espousing altruism.
      If any label does this, they will be sued by their shareholders for not generating profit.

      The labels are caught in a bind as much as bands are, PROFIT.
      The pathological pursuit of profit alone is a company's role.

      If the label offers bittottent, and has cookie jars they become a not-for-profit trust like Salvation Army.
      Shareholders will sue and make sure either the board is replaced or the board is behind bars.

    • 1,3-6: Agree 2: It would be nice, but the implementation may be impossible or improbable if these percentages are different per artist or even per album. 7. Do not agree. Whether you or anyone else wants to believe its not true, everyone needs to make a living. It is never just about the music/art, but it is obviously more for some then others. It is great what Radiohead is doing, but they are established. They have enough money and cred that this "experiment" won't hurt them, worst case is they won't m
      • On #7: There is no technological or legal way to stop filesharing. The best they can do is appeal to the honor of the filesharers and at least maybe get some donations out of it.

        It's going to happen. Do you want to fight a battle you can't win, or realize that people are going to copy files over the internet no matter *what* you do?
  • It's amazing how well polling organizations can misinterpret data. The spending wasn't lost, it just didn't go through the record companies.
  • True, and they always have the lawsuit business model to fall back on if times get rough.

  • Music is free now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cdrguru ( 88047 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @03:06PM (#20889869) Homepage
    The cost of something is determined by the lowest retail price. For music that is zero today. Most people are unwilling to assign a much higher value to it either.

    This means any commercial enterprise which revolves around selling music is doomed. People will redistribute it and remove any possible value from your product.

    This means the end of recorded music as a commercial enterprise. Period. I don't see a choice. I understand this is now how it is in China today - they gave up against piracy. I is going to be that way elsewhere shortly.

    Movies are probably next.

    • The cost of something is determined by the lowest retail price. For music that is zero today. Most people are unwilling to assign a much higher value to it either.

      This means any commercial enterprise which revolves around selling music is doomed. People will redistribute it and remove any possible value from your product.

      Spot on. And it's actually a good thing, because it means money will flow to more productive purposes.

      On the other hand, the music store is not necessarily doomed. Music is free, and there'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Eskarel ( 565631 )
      I disagree, I think music has a value, and that the vast majority of people would rather do the right thing and pay something than pirate.

      The problem for the record industry is both finding that price, and recreating their image(should they choose to do so). Their profitability is dependent on finding a price point where people find that the product is convenient and valuable, and having something that people like. Their problem is that aside from general dislike of large corporations, they've proved themse

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mpe ( 36238 )
        Society still enjoys music, and if you don't pay something for it people won't produce it,

        Actually the latter isn't the case, there are people who enjoy producing music. They would continue to do so regardless of financial reward.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Eskarel ( 565631 )
          Yes, but those people still have to eat, and if you want them to be able to work full time on making music, they have to be able to make money off music, that's the whole point of copyright in the first place.
    • To a large degree your right, however the music is only part of the product they sell.

      About the best product they sold was the LP. It felt good it looked good it was possible to instantly recognise an album you could grab a handful and flick through and find what you wanted in seconds they were easy to gather up..

      CD's Improve only in the quality of the recording. The cases are terrible they break slide pop open and scratch the CD's they are fiddly to store. Even the Cabinets are ugly. An LP could be a beaut

    • The cost of something is determined by the lowest retail price. For music that is zero today. Most people are unwilling to assign a much higher value to it either.

      This just simply is not true. Look at Magnatunes [magnatunes.com]: they let you choose how much you want to pay for an album, with a minimum of $5. If what you said was true one would expect almost everyone to pay $5. Instead, the average price people pay is $8! Apparently, people are perfectly willing to pay for music, as long as they know (as is the case with

  • The LIE that few spot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07, 2007 @03:10PM (#20889897)

    I am a person, I got an income of 1000 dollars which I spend completly every month, 600 of which goes to fixed expenses like housing, insurance, taxes and other mundane stuff that you have to pay. Two hundred I spent on essentials like food, clothing, phone, etc. That leaves 200 to spend on fun. Lets say that before filesharing I spend that 50 dolllars of that 200 on music, now with filesharing I don't.

    How much money has been lost to the economy because of filesharing?

    Not a single penny.

    If you don't understand why, you are an idiot, stop reading, american idol is probably on, if it ain't watch the static.

    To everyone else offcourse it is obvious, I spend ALL my money in the economy, it does not matter to the economy WHAT it is spend upon. If I don't spend it in shop A I spend it in shop B, shopowner A may not like it but the economy doesn't give a shit, as long as I spend.

    Now if you were to present me with figures that show that people nowadays are saving more money then before, then you might have a point, if teenagers start putting their allowances into banks instead of CD's then the world might indeed come to an end (although I am sure an economists could explain how this too would just be another way of spending)

    Simply put, although I haven't bought a CD or a DVD or even a game in ages, that doesn't mean I don't spend money, turbine has large faction of it with my lifelong LOTRO copy, Blizzard got maybe a half-dozen full games sales out of me with WoW. The record company doesn't sell me CD's but I pay several CD's worth each month to my ISP.

    They talk about money flows sometimes and that is just what money does, it flows like a river and sometimes that river changes courses, leaving one area dry and flooding another. It is part of live. We spend less on coal and more on gas. Once we bought hay, today we buy petrol, tomorrow, who knows, but there always be a inn/service station beside the road selling fuel, not just for our mode of transport, but ourselves.

    If you really want to talk about lost money to a countries economy, check where those CD's are made. I can bet you a lot of money it ain't the US of A or Great Britian or wherever. It is china. Now putting ALL that manufacturing in low wage countries, now THAT hurts the local economy, to the tune of far more then a handfull of billions. Why don't we hear the music industry about that eh?

    Wanna see proof? Go into an archive and look at pictures of your local highstreet, see how one type of store just gets replaced with another over the years. I am willing to bet that your local music store is now housing a mobile phone store. That is what people spend money on nowadays.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mpe ( 36238 )
      To everyone else offcourse it is obvious, I spend ALL my money in the economy, it does not matter to the economy WHAT it is spend upon. If I don't spend it in shop A I spend it in shop B, shopowner A may not like it but the economy doesn't give a shit, as long as I spend.
      Now if you were to present me with figures that show that people nowadays are saving more money then before, then you might have a point, if teenagers start putting their allowances into banks instead of CD's then the world might indeed c

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bentcd ( 690786 )

      To everyone else offcourse it is obvious, I spend ALL my money in the economy, it does not matter to the economy WHAT it is spend upon. If I don't spend it in shop A I spend it in shop B, shopowner A may not like it but the economy doesn't give a shit, as long as I spend.

      (Assuming for a moment that the economy doesn't mind us anthropomorphising it . . .)
      The above isn't entirely correct. Capitalism builds on a premise that what people spend money on is a decent expression of what sort of things they want and what sort of things they think are "good". When you stop spending money on music /in spite/ of you actually liking music (and obtaining it by other means), you are effectively feeding the economy erroneous information and this will, in principle, reduce the quality of t

  • Hey, I'm all for capitalism and all, but the music "industry" must die as it isn't about music. If you are a musician you know that radio play is tightly controlled by the big corporations. You ain't getting radio play if you ain't dealing with the big corporations.

    So, the HUGE majority of musicians and bands never get on the air, never get any play, and never will and are far better than what you hear on the radio.

    The internet removed the industry from the mix, you can make money without them. This should
  • Guy Hands is the founder and CEO of the private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners that bought EMI, not the head of EMI.

    I'm sure as the owner of the owner of the company he holds a fair amount of sway, but he's not in charge of running the company. The directors of EMI Music Publishing UK can be found at the bottom of this page:

    http://www.emimusicpub.com/worldwide/around_the_world/united-kingdom_home.html [emimusicpub.com]

  • Can't they do both? A decade ago, there were too few record labels. Now there are only four, and that's four too many,

    If I were a professional musician, I'd be releasing my recordings under a license that permitted (at least) verbatim redistribution, including commercial redistribution. That way I'd still be making little or nothing off the sale of the recordings, but many more people would be able to access and afford a copy, and I'd be able to make the music I wanted when I wanted.

    While it's good to se

  • Welcome to 1999 fellas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by damburger ( 981828 ) on Sunday October 07, 2007 @04:57PM (#20890735)

    If the record companies had changed their business model when the business actually changed, they might have survived. As it is, they spent years alienating their consumers, crushing innocent people in extremely vindictive lawsuits, and generally establishing themselves in the minds of young people as the worst thing since the Third Reich.

    Changing direction might have worked before you all made yourselves into the embodiment of corporate greed, contempt for humanity and disregard for civil liberties.

  • Yes, it could be due to P2P. But it could also be other things.
    How about "1 billion lost due to a record industry that alienated itself to the public"?

  • As of now i have Best Classics 100 Vol 1, (6cd, stuffed with classical music), Best Classics 100 Vol 2 (6cd again), Best Relaxing classics (6 cd again, Best Baroque Classics (again 6 cd).

    All are emi's.

    I duly ripped them off to my hd, and im listening them wherever, however i want. No holds barred, no restrictions.

    I bought all these just over the course of a year. goddamn easy. Up to that point, for over 10 years, i havent bought a single music cd. im serious. then, when i got into classical music a
  • Don't know how many people have heard of Janis Ian, but a friend of mine who has a bunch of friends in the Music industry (producers etc...) pointed these out to me when we were building out a music venture (which never got off the ground). They're old, but a good read from the musician side.

    http://www.janisian.com/articles-perfsong/internetdebacle.pdf [janisian.com]

    http://www.janisian.com/articles-perfsong/Fallout%20-%20rev%2011-23-05.pdf [janisian.com]

  • There seems to be this mass mis-concept that CD's are not digital music, and the word 'digital' being misused to mean 'Internet downloadable only', or something like that.

    CD's continue to have several advantages, at least to the purchases, that have been fairly scarce with 'Internet downloadable' music:

    1. Its a full 44 Khz non-compressed. (Granted, egotistcal audiophiles will still prefer their vinyl, but we're are talking the average consumer here)

    2. No built-in "Digital Restrictions" - you can copy the au
  • Shit! If EMI is going digital, does that mean I have to replace all my EMI CDs, since my CDs are apparently analog? ;)
  • I only ever listen to music played through a computer or an ipod these days. In fact, I use CDs so infrequently (it's been many months since the last time) I just threw out all my original jewel cases and album inserts and now keep all my original CDs on CDR spindles. It's so much less clutter and takes way less space. Plus, I don't have to keep shelling out for new CD holders. If I don't like a song, I delete it so I never have to skip it again. I can keep lyrics to my favourite songs right in the son

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