The Set List

Guy Hands Reshapes EMI And Puts Money In Roger Ames' Pocket

The day after Nick Gatfield agreed to run A&R for EMI, Guy Hands informed the music company's staff about further reorganization.
EMI is substituting two boards for its Music Management Board as part of its restructuring and moving former U.S. chief Roger Ames into an acquisitions role.
EMI Music will be overseen by a Chairman's Board, which EMI executive chairman Guy Hands will lead and an Operating Board that Chris Roling, who has been given the title of president and Chief Operating Officer, will run.
The Chairman’s Board will focus on developing long-term strategy and deal with major strategic topics such as acquisitions. The Operating Board will deal with all day-to-day business decisions and operations and will include functional presidents, regional presidents and support service leaders.
Ames, who has a place on the Chairman’s Board, will be working with Hands and Terra Firma on strategic acquisitions. Until Nick Gatfield joins the company as the A&R point man for U.S. and U.K. labels, Ashley Unwin will hold the interim title of head of North American and UK A&R/Labels.
“The formation of this board completes EMI Music's transition to a global functional matrix organization,” Hands wrote in a memo to staff on Thursday.
Named regional presidents Thursday were Colin Finkelstein (North America), David Kassler (U.K. and Ireland), Jean-Francois Cecillon (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Adrian Cheesley (Japan, Asia, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand).
“The global functional organisation will ensure that we maximize our global reach, leverage, speed and efficiency, while continuing to give our artists the benefit of our strong local presence,” Hands wrote in the memo. “Our staff will be able to draw upon resources from across the company to help you and your creative projects. The company, as a whole, will benefit from a much better flow of information and ideas, thus ensuring you have proper global support."

EMI's 2009 Financial Plan: Coldplay's Success Is Life Or Death

Looking at the possibility of starting fiscal year 2009 with a bang, EMI will release Coldplay's  fourth album, "Viva La Vida," in the third week of June, toward the end of the first quarter of the now private Brit conglom. Company is not likely to release year-end financials, which would reveal the costs of its massive restructuring.
Hits have been few and far between for EMI in Guy Hands' rookie season and the company's current representatives in the top 50 are a Trace Adkins hits compilation  and the B-52's first album in 16 years. The pressure will be enormous for  "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends" - that's the full title - to perform at a level equal or better than its predecessor, "X&Y," which has sold 10 million copies worldwide since its release in 2005. (The RIAA, which certifies shipments, has "X&Y" at 3 million copies in the U.S.)
"X&Y" sold 737,294 copies in its first week of release back in 2005 and Coldplay-mania was so strong then that their first two albums, "A Rush of Blood to the Head"  and "Parachutes" rose to Nos. 1 and 2 on the catalog albums chart. "XX&Y" debuted at No. 1 in more than 20 countries.
During the Eric Nicoli years, EMI often blamed stock slumps on the lack of or delays in new Coldplay and/or Radiohead material, which meant the company had  to tout  Beach Boys, Dean Martin and Beatles packages along with front line  releases for signs of good news.
With EMI streamlined, the jury is still out as to whether they will be able to break new artists on the scale of Coldplay or even Norah Jones. But its reduction in size, however, may mean that a single record from a single band may be able to jumpstart a company.   
The album's 10 tracks are:

"Life in Technicolor"
"Cemeteries of London"
"Lost!"
"42"
"Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love"
"Yes"
"Viva La Vida"
"Violet Hill"
"Strawberry Swing"
"Death and All His Friends"

EMI To Facebook The Music?

With no specifics and a headline that spells out the obvious, the U.K.'s brandrepublic.com reports that EMI will be embark on a digital overhaul that will emphasize social networking to boost the music company's bottom line. Article does not note that, while attractive to investors, sites such as MySpace have yet to turn significant profits or lead to sales of recorded music.

EMI Starts To Organize Artists By Revenue

Hits has Guy Hands' internal memo  regarding the reorganization of EMI staff posted on its website and he actually spells out what has and might happen.
The interesting parts:
EMI  has 14,425 artists on its roster.
Last year, they tried to break 1,300 globally.
He writes: "This is clearly unsustainable; we need to focus on those artists for whom we have both the time and expertise to support properly and with whom we can be successful.
As of today, I cannot tell you the future size of the reduction in EMI’s roster. We are going through a systematic process of categorising artists signed to EMI:
1)      Those currently profitable, which is currently only about 3%.
2)      Those we believe can be profitable, which we clearly hope is as large as possible.
3)      Those whom will never be profitable, no matter how we change the model.

"We believe there are alternative models outside of the profit model required by EMI to support these artists, such as local and corporate sponsors and angels."

Angels? Does that mean that if jazz is to survive as an art form, it will require grants and donors contributing to EMI so that Bill Charlap and Robert Glasper are allowed to continue to record for Blue Note?
Jazz has got to be the least profitable music style that still  gets a bit of attention at the major labels. Of course, the recording of instrumentalists has pretty much disappeared within Warner Music (Nonesuch handles the occasional release), Sony BMG (Columbia jazz where are you?) and Universal, which has nearly shut down Verve but continues to distribute ECM.
Blue Note, with its brilliant history and recent bounty (that would be Norah Jones), has become EMI's home for adult-oriented music (that would those of us in our 40s). It is quite likely that the label will continue to eliminate jazz artists until it is strictly a collection of singers who appeal to NPR listeners.  Suzanne Vega made a fine album for them last year and  it was a clunker at retail; an Hunt was moved over from Capitol and, sadly, there has been little buzz.
It's just another indication that the possibility of an out of left field hit - not a novelty record but a true career artist working on the fringes - will become impossible. And that's a sad day.