p2pnet - rss feed: Wake up — or die, EMI told
p2pnet news | Music:- UK band Radiohead are showing Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG which way is up, big time. And they’re now getting support from a new and unexpected quarter.
Guy Hands, CEO and founder of Terra Firma, the private equity group, which bought EMI in August, told staff in a confidential email, “the industry had been too slow to embrace the digital revolution,” says The Telegraph, going on:
Hands’ letter followed the decision by Radiohead, “nurtured by EMI but now out of contract with the label, ” to release their latest album online.
In the email, Hands called Radiohead’s action “a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy,” says the story.
“The recorded music industry … has for too long been dependent on how many CDs can be sold,” it has Hands saying, going on:
“Rather than embracing digitalisation and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, the industry has stuck its head in the sand.”
EMI was the first of the Big 4 organised music companies to drop DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control,.
Adds The Telegraph:
“Hands suggests moving away from the model of paying large advances – Robbie Williams signed an £80m deal with EMI in 2002 – in exchange for the label’s right to keep the majority of the takings from new releases. Instead, labels could simply subsidise the making of an album or the beginning of a tour in exchange for a share in the profits – or losses.
“Hands is understood to have been impressed by the inventiveness of EMI’s music publishing division, which owns the copyright to songs, in making money from new sources. It has licensed lyrics to be printed on jeans and posters and music videos to be played on YouTube.”
Radiohead is telling fans, “Pay us what you think our music is worth!”
Will Hands now advise the other three members of the cartel to abandon the bizarre sue ‘em all marketing plan (also enthusiastically implemented by EMI) under which music lovers such as Minnesota mother Jammie Thomas are being hauled into court to be accused of being massive online distributors of music owned by the labels?is
Stay tuned.
(And Happy Thanksgiving to fellow Canadians 
)
Also See:
The Telegraph -Embrace digital or die, EMI told, October 8, 2007
telling fans - Kylie Minogue: going online, October 8, 2007
sue ‘em all marketing plan - Hit the RIAA and Big Music where it hurts, October 5, 2007
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October 10th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
I HOPE the big 4 wakes up and smells the coffee….but I really do doubt it. Dinosaurs took a long time to become extinct….the same may go for the outdated thinking that some of the dinosaurs running the big 4 have.