It has taken the music industry a while to catch up with changing consumer behaviour. EMI has taken longer than most. The decline of the old album model and the rise of the iPod culture hastened its takeover by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma in 2007. Last week Hands wrote off half the £2.3 billion he invested, accepting that he is likely to make a loss on the deal.
Still, Leoni-Sceti, used to selling Cillit Bang stain remover and Airwick air freshener during his 16 years at Reckitt Benckiser, believes he is reconfiguring EMI for the MySpace generation and this involves more than chasing after illegal downloaders.
This means more work for artists. All but the biggest bands such as Coldplay will have to rethink the tradition of producing a 12-track album every second year. “Kids have an attention span that lasts a split-second,” said Leoni-Sceti. “As an act, if you do not keep that relationship going on a weekly basis you lose a bunch of them, who go somewhere else and forget about you.”
Read the full recent EMI articles, including news of Terra Firma's write-offs of the EMI purchase at the Coldplay forum here onwards [thanks mimixxx]
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