EMI to cut almost half of its staff
Monday, January 14th, 2008
EMI, one of the Big Four music megacompanies and loss-makers, will be cutting as many as 2,000 of its 5,500 employees worldwide this week in a move said to involve the company’s consolidation of administrative functions among its 40 record labels.
Guy Hands, CEO of the private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners is claiming he’ll invest huge amounts of money in A&R, probably the most interesting development since the change-of-hands the company experienced in 2007.
Is it possible that a businessman from a private equity firm realizes that one of the many things the music industry is lacking by the boatload is real talent, great music and meaningful lyrics? I don’t know if we’ll ever see a trend returning to quality A&R scouting among the Big Four, but it sure sounds like a good start.
I don’t think there’s any hope for the traditional music industry mafia but this is at least (the faintest) hope that not all businessheads are boneheads.
With the continuing decay in CD sales and the surge of independent, high-quality low-price artists emerging on the Internet through digital distribution (the new-ish retail store is in iTunes - even that’s getting old hat!), this is just one step closer to the industry crematorium.
It is worth noting that EMI was the first of the Big Four record companies to sell non-DRM digital music, quickly followed by Universal, but their shady history may be more than enough to kill it even as it makes an all-too-slow move to better practices.
