Music Ally

Three senior EMI execs, including CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti, have given an in-depth interview to Billboard talking about the label’s strategy. Among the interesting points are their comments about selling DRM-free songs on iTunes, and whether it boosted online piracy.

“We didn’t see the needle move at all,” says worldwide president of digital Douglas Merrill, referring to the amount of online piracy. “But what we did see is consumers loved the product.”

But perhaps most intriguing is the label’s intention to place more of a focus on artist-fan relationships. “What you’ll see is less of a focus on sales of individual tracks or the conceptual equivalent of little round shiny disks, and more about helping artists learn things about their fan group that they can’t directly see.” There’s plenty more in the article.

Today’s Financial Times has a report on EMI Music’s planned restructuring into three separate business units: new music, catalogue, and music services.

The news comes as EMI announces earnings of £59 million in the six months to the end of September, compared with a £14 million loss in the same period last year. EMI says its first-half physical recorded music sales were down 3%, although the fall was 12% in the US.

Revenues rose to £482 million, with digital revenues rising 37% to £102 million. Meanwhile, CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti says the soon-to-launch EMI.com D2C site will have “limited commercial scope” but will provide “learning value for the consumer”.

Terra Firma has revealed just how large a task it’s facing turning EMI around, releasing a report showing pro forma losses grew from £287 million to £757 million in the year to 31 March 2008, due to financing costs, asset writedowns and restructuring costs.

The report takes aim at recorded music division EMI Music in particular, claiming that 88% of artists signed to EMI made no money for the company, and that the label had lost £125 million on new music during the year. Oh, and EMI spent £700,000 on London taxis during the year, too.

The report also says, however, that EMI’s operational performance has “improved significantly” in the last seven and a half months. It’ll be interesting to see just how big that improvement is next time Terra Firma releases some figures…

MySpace Music’s launch, originally scheduled for yesterday, then moved to Thursday of this week, may get pushed back a week or more, Silicon Alley Insider reports. This leads to further speculation that the
delay is caused by the company’s desire to conclude a deal with EMI to offer its catalogue through the service. Deals are already in place with Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony BMG.

It’s a busy week for British digital music stores We7 and 7digital. We7 has announced that it’s signed EMI for its ad-supported streaming music service, with the label also making its MP3 catalogue available for users to purchase. Meanwhile, 7digital has started selling MP3s from Universal Music Group, making it one of the first European music stores to do so. It appears to be the start of a rollout across Europe though - German store Saturn has just started selling UMG MP3s too.

Things are looking up for EMI, at least according to an email sent out to staff by chairman Guy Hands, which hails a positive Q1 for the company - generating positive ebitda of £59.2 million compared to a loss of £45.1 million in the same quarter last year. (more…)

EMI Music claims that Coldplay’s new album `Viva La Vida’ is now the biggest ever paid album download, having shifted 394.000 digital copies in the last three weeks (this is based on Nielsen Soundscan figures in the US). That’s a big chunk of the overall 1.1 million sales too - bolstered by the band’s digital promotions in the run-up to its release with iTunes.

EMI has confirmed the much-rumoured appointment of Elio Leoni-Sceti as the chief executive of its recorded music division. He joins from European firm Reckitt Benckiser, triggering much `he’s been selling soap, now he’ll be selling music’ coverage in the media. (more…)

EMI has licensed 25,000 tracks and videos to a music kiosk company which aims to take over airports across Europe. The first installation is in Italy’s Fiumicinco international airport in Rome where travellers will be able download tracks from EMI’s frontline catalogue in MP3 format. The kiosks are being rolled out by UK firm MEDIAnywhere which claims that it will open another 350 kiosks in 26 European airports within the next two years.

Coldplay’s free download ‘Violet Hill’ Coldplay has apparently been downloaded 600,000 in 24 hours according to EMI, which has already dubbed the trial a ‘huge success’. The DRM-free track will only be available until it goes on sale as a paid download on May 6. Did nobody tell Chris Martin that Thom Yorke (more…)