Music Ally

EMI Music has announced a restructure that’ll see its digital unit merged back into the main company. Former Googler Douglas Merrill is stepping down from his role as president of digital and chief operating officer of EMI’s New Music unit, while senior VP of digital strategy Cory Ondrejka is being promoted to the new post of executive vice president of digital marketing.

EMI says digital now accounts for 20% of its recorded music revenues, and also says that Ondrejka will continue working on the company’s digital marketing strategy, heading up the label’s experimentation with new models – for example its D2C website, which launched just before Christmas.

What this means for the team Ondrejka was building in the digital unit remains to be seen, though. When he spoke to Music Ally at MidemNet this year, he talked about recruiting developers from the Bay area and fostering a startup mentality within the digital unit.

“Cory is a highly talented executive with a passion for music and a unique technology-based skillset,” says EMI Music CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti. “He will help us deliver our goal of leveraging the power of digital across our business, particularly in the key areas of consumer understanding and analytics, content creation and digital marketing in order to strengthen the relationship and interaction between our artists and their fans.”

No news on why Merrill is leaving the company. When he joined from Google, his appointment was hailed as a brave move for EMI in its desire to think outside the traditional major label mindset. His departure begs the question of whether that proved to be a culture clash. “I would like to thank Douglas for his contribution to the company and to wish him well for the future,” is Leoni-Sceti’s comment in the announcement.

EMI appointed former Second Life CTO Cory Ondrejka as its senior vice president of digital strategy last year. We sat down with him during MIDEM to see what he’s been up to.

Compared to popular music sites like Imeem, iLike and Last.fm, the recently-relaunched EMI.com portal looks somewhat limited. However, the man in charge of the project, Cory Ondrejka, says it’s just a starting point, allowing the label to connect directly with music fans, while working with labels to find new ways to release content. Oh, and to help in negotiations with startups. “It’s very much a first step, and we’re going to be building on it,” he says.

“We’re not doing it to compete with any existing businesses in the space, but if we’re going to be working with other businesses, we better understand that business and the data issues involved. If a startup comes in saying ‘we wanna do this and here’s the data we’ll share’, we can say ‘well, we know you’re also collecting this data, because of the experiments we’ve been doing. And if you’re not, you should be!’ We’ll just be a better partner.”

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As senior VP of digital strategy at major label EMI, much of Cory Ondrejka’s job involves finding new ways for bands to engage with their fans online. However, it seems there’s no question of artists being forced to get all Web 2.0 against their will.

“If you’re a band, you’re using Twitter because, y’know what, it’s really kinda fun giving your fans this blow-by-blow account of getting to the stage, or your bus breaking down in a snowstorm,” he told us at MidemNet this week.

“Sharing stories is what builds communities, and for some artists that is really enjoyable. But if Twittering is work for you, maybe you should have someone else doing it for you. And that’s okay.”

Indeed, he says the question of whether or not bands should be on Twitter reminds him of being asked about Second Life, in his previous job as CTO at Linden Lab.

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Next up is a panel session on knowing your fans, moderated by Hypebot’s Bruce Houghton, and featuring EMI’s Cory Ondrejka, Band Metrics’ Duncan Freeman and Million’s Neil Cartwright.

Freeman is up first, who explains we have ubiquitous internet access nowadays, and that there’s been a sea-change (the buzzphrase of MidemNet so far) of social networking, with MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and so on. And also the decreased cost of developing a music site – you can have a Muxtape up and running in a few weeks.

“What you’ve done is created this platform to launch data at an astounding rate,” he says. So what can you do with all the data that’s being produced around music – everything from how many times people have played x track on MySpace, to people’s comments on their social networking profile or Twitter about a band, song or gig. Which ties neatly into what Band Metrics is doing, of course.

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