You all know I’ve been watching the situation at EMI with interest over the last couple of weeks. I think the most interesting aspect of the debate is on where EMI is headed and the affect their new direction will have on their artists.

Market Research

Shockingly, EMI apparently don’t do any market research before releasing an album. Do they just let the artists do their own thing and then release the end product? Well, that would explain Rudebox. As I reported yesterday, even Kylie’s album hasn’t been as popular as you might expect.

Yet on the other hand, there seems to be an attitude among the artists and their managers that EMI should be marketing their material more aggressively – Robbie’s manager Tim Clarke has been quoted as saying:

“The question is, ‘Should Robbie deliver the new album he is due to release to EMI?’ We have to say the answer is ‘No’. We have no idea how EMI will market and promote the album. They do not have anyone in the digital sphere capable of doing the job required. All we know is they are going to decimate their staff.”

The problem is, if Robbie’s next album is as much a criticial and commercial turkey as Rudebox, how much money are EMI prepared to spend pissing against the wind? If Robbie is out of touch with his fanbase (which I suspect he is), why should EMI shell out for an album that strokes Robbie’s ego and no-one else’s?

Complacency

It was saggy-faced Liverpudlian Paul McCartney who described EMI as becoming very boring: “Everybody at EMI had become a part of the furniture. I’d be a couch; Coldplay are an armchair. And Robbie Williams, I dread to think what he was.”

A statistic that shocked me was that half of EMI’s profits come from back catalogue artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden and others. Worse still, the division that manages back catalogue material is much less costly to run than the recorded music division.

When you look at the business in this way, it’s obvious that EMI needed refocussing and for some of that dead weight – both in management and in talent – needed to be stripped away.

I think Guy Hands and his Terra Firma team are going in with a mission to turn EMI’s business around. They’ve already acknowledged that there’ll be casualties along the way, 2,000 heads to be precise.

The Future?

When you consider that half of EMI’s profits come from old material, it’s be nice to think that the label would get out there and discover some acts that they can develop and who’ll have long-term appeal.

They seem cutthroat enough to ditch acts that have lost their appeal or aren’t delivering the goods anymore. And although they seem like the big bad wolf right now, I’d like to see EMI and Guy Hands become more instrumental in discovering great new talent. However, too many stories about disgruntled artists isn’t going to do their image any good.

They need to start showing where they fit in with the music industry today. I’d love to see just one major label drop the tired old cash cow acts in favour of new artists that will reinvigorate the scene.