Hopefully, things won't get so sliced and diced that it doesn't get in the way of the Beatles remasters. Hopefully, the green light is ahead. I can only imagine that the eventual Paul/Heather settlement will be the only holdup now. Maybe not.

I'm just glad WEA didn't get them. Label consolidation is bad.

Agreed 100%. But, isn't there talk that Terra Firma might still sell the record label to Warner and keep the publishing company for themselves?

I Remember being VERY unhappy when Seagrams swallowed up all the Polygram labels (many of which Polygram had previously inhaled) & created Universal.

Yep, it's all about bean counters these days.......buy your Beatles at Burger King!

EMI aims to reap more income from legendary catalog

By Yinka Adegoke Tue Aug 21, 3:29 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Executives at EMI Group Plc, which is being bought by private equity firm Terra Firma, are working on ways to squeeze new revenue from the company's catalog of artists and songs from the Beatles to the Beach Boys.

EMI has formed long-term strategic relationships with advertising agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB to find new ways to repackage music and create music-related products around its artists, recordings and songs.

"Our back catalog is so prestigious and so rich in heritage in its impact on pop culture that half our effort is reminding people and recreating awareness of the music's availability, " said Ronn Werre, president of EMI Music Marketing.

Over the next year, Saatchi & Saatchi will help EMI seek new ways for fans to reconnect to music they might hear on a commercial or TV show and ultimately translate that into a transaction, Werre said in an interview.

EMI slipped last year to rank fourth among the world's largest music companies, losing market share due to a weak artist roster. The wider music industry's fortunes also took a worse than expected turn as U.S. CD sales, already on the decline, fell nearly 20 percent in the first half of the year.

But it wasn't always like this for EMI. The company owns one of the most prized collections of labels and artist recordings in the entertainment business, including Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra and The Rolling Stones.

Some analysts say the high price of $4.8 billion that Terra Firma is paying for EMI can be justified in part by its strong catalog and the brand names of its artists.

FRONT END, BACK END

Traditionally, music companies have focused on the "front end" of their business, producing new releases and discovering new artists. Their relationships with marketing agencies are usually on a album-by-album basis. While front-end remains important, the emphasis has clearly shifted.

"In the new world of the music industry, where revenues are declining and margins are tighter, and with a key demographic trend where music buyers are getting older, it means that back catalog gets more important," says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Jupiter Research.

Indeed EMI executives, like their counterparts at Warner Music Group and market leader Universal Music Group, have acknowledged the need to diversify their businesses as the old model of selling CDs or downloads comes under pressure.

Extracting more revenue out of back catalog makes sense in a market where the future is uncertain, said Mulligan.

"Back catalog is a safe high margin business because you have low fixed costs with no advance fees or studio time payments, and it's lower risk because these artists are known brands," he said.

EMI's new marketing drive is also closely tied to its decision in April to drop copy protection software from music it sells in digital formats.

The company says dropping digital rights management (DRM) will free the music to be marketed and shared in a variety of new products and services still to be announced.

One example is a partnership with Chicago-based digital marketing agency VerveLife last month, which will make EMI's music available on a Burger King-branded mini-Web site.

"Since we went DRM-free, it's very easy for us to get to where the consumer is rather than the consumer to get to where the music is," said Werre.

Saatchi & Saatchi is owned by France's Publicis. DDB is part of Omnicom Group.

I just hope The Beatle remasters will not be bare-boned affiars. Stuff those babies to the gills with extras, please!

One Magical Mystery Meal comin' right up!

Be careful - I could see them using that one!

The Beatles could be going to the toppermost of the Whoppermost!!!

I am the Whopper. Goo goo g'joob.

You want yellow matter custard with that?

Report: EMI will crack down on artists
Fri Nov 2, 7:49 AM ET

LONDON - The new owner of EMI Group PLC has said he will drop artists the music group believes are not working hard enough and will overhaul the company's own executives' pay packages, the Financial Times reported Friday.

EMI, which has Coldplay, the Rolling Stones and Kylie Minogue on its roster, also threatened to withdraw stars' lucrative advances if record sales are disappointing, the FT said, quoting an internal memo to staff from the chief executive of the private equity firm that bought the company in August.

Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma Capital Partners, said the company would in the future be "more selective in whom we choose to work with."

"While many spend huge amounts of time working with their label to promote, perfect and endorse their music, some unfortunately simply focus on negotiating for the maximum advance ... advances which are often never repaid," Hands said.

The report said the memo did not name any artists. The company, which Terra Firma bought for $4.9 billion, has been plagued in the past by late delivery of albums by some of its biggest acts.

Hands also criticized EMI's "compensation and management system put in place over the last 20 years which does not encourage the right behaviors or reward the right actions."

"What worries me is that the existing structures have been put in over a couple of decades and unpicking them in a way that releases the good in the company is not going to happen overnight," he added.

EMI did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_ ... ritain_emi

As sure as the sun rising the next morning ~ a failing corporate business model always hastens its demise by making things worse under the mistaken impression that they're "taking control of things".

Artists are slowly waking up to the fact that they no longer need music labels as middlemen. Middlemen that they've always found hateful, noxious, intrusive and sometimes downright criminal. So what do the labels do in response to a potential mass defection? They say they're going to treat their artists even worse.

I think Terra Firma basically flushed $4.9 billion down the drain.

Yeah, I like the way the rap labels handle things better--take care of your own talent by...er..."cracking down" on the talent on the OTHER labels...

If my memory serves me correctly, A&M Records (now part of Universal) did the same thing about a decade ago. They retained four or five big selling artists and cut loose all of the rest. I'm not sure if they have any new releases any more or if they rely totally on their back catalogue.

I'm very curious to see how many bands will thrive once large numbers of them are doing their own marketing and promoting. Has anyone ever heard any statistics about how successful the web (and sites like MySpace) have been at promoting bands? I'm actually quite optimistic that the Internet is going to prove to be the catalyst that again makes music to an art form instead of the "commodity" that it has been for the past several years.

I'd like to see EMI threaten to drop the pencil-pushers they have masquerading as people of artistic vision. Actually, that's kind of the way I feel about the record companies that are left in general.

I would love to start a "record label" based on artistic achievement, not what the "major" labels are doing today.

Can you hear the death rattle as the dinosaurs consume each other (corporate mergers) and work their way towards extinction??

I still believe in things like albums and physical media, though - so I suppose I'm a dinosaur as well.

Oh well...

Excellent analysis, Linda of the current situation - kind of reminds me of where I work in a way.

IIRC, that was after the Polygram/MCA merger that resulted in UMG. The label only still exists due to terms of the sale from Alpert & Moss to Polygram back in the day. They sued UMG in 2000 when the label's management was merged with Interscope's and Geffen's. About their only artists left from before the merger are Sheryl Crow, Sting, and Chris Cornell/Soundgarden. Black-Eyed Peas have been a good performer lately, though.