Word: emi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...some $19.3 billion in total sales last year, a quarter less than in 1999. The digital market is hardly new, yet it still seems to catch major record labels dozing. Alt-rockers Radiohead last year famously distributed their album In Rainbows without the help of their former record company, EMI, instead letting fans decide how much to pay the band to download it. Meanwhile, adding to the sense that this entire industry is in flux, musicians' other means of income - from T-shirt sales to concert tours - are booming. "The whole industry is moving into a new phase," says Mark...
...taking on EMI is a different proposition altogether. Private equity firms, unlike the stars on EMI's books, prefer to toil in, well, private, dissecting a business well away from the glare of the media. Way before Hands took an axe to EMI's payroll, Terra Firma's management of the business was caught in the spotlights. Worried that Hands wouldn't know his A&R from his R&B, alt-rockers Radiohead severed ties with the label shortly after it was sold to the private equity firm, and took the radical step of allowing fans to download and name...
...shedding more than a third of its workforce, EMI didn't allay Clark's fears. But with only a few hundred of its 4,800 staff deployed in A&R - the business of scouting for and developing artists - Hands's plan to make it more central to EMI seems sensible. But it's also obvious. And by trailing something you'd expect to already be an aim of record companies everywhere, Hands has drawn suspicion. "Here's a business person trying to turn [EMI] into a more creative company," says Dave Allen, bass player with British post-punk band Gang...
...work fruitfully in the creative industries. Since Permira, another leading U.K. private equity firm, took a majority stake in ALL3MEDIA in 2006, the British TV production company has been performing well, says Rob Donaldson, head of private equity at consultants Baker Tilly in London. A bigger worry for EMI: the publicity generated by the shakeup pushes more artists to withhold their music. "It's difficult for artists to invest in a company going through such change," says one record industry exec. "Will the A&R man who believes in you be there next month...
...Whether he is or not, chances are he won't have soothed music's biggest headache. As is the quandary elsewhere, digital sales of EMI's music, which account for a tenth of revenues, are rising - just not quickly enough to make up for plummeting sales of its CDs. And piracy remains prolific. Almost 20 billion tracks were illegally swapped or downloaded on the net in 2005. Dreaming up new ways to make money is vital. One solution: teaming willing artists' albums up with corporate sponsors, as EMI plans to do. That might have some artists turning in their grave...