A New Model For The Recording Industry: No More EMI?

EMI is in trouble. The venerable home of The Beatles and Pink Floyd is in dire financial straits, so dire that if the problem is not solved by June it's possible EMI will be bankrupt, broken apart, and pieces of its cadaver sold off to pay its debts. Oh the humanity!

How did the once powerful and influential label get into this situation? Is it the fault of the downloaders? Is it because the private equity owners had no idea about the music business? Was it bad choices by the A&R staff who could not discover anything that would sell? Was it bad marketing? Was it losing Paul McCartney to Columbia in the 1980s? Was it Vanilla Ice?

The answers to these questions would take more time and space than I have available and frankly, I don't know the answers, but they are worth pondering (except maybe the Vanilla Ice one). I have a soft spot for EMI or Capitol Records as they are better known in North America. They are and were the label of The Beatles and Wings. EMI is one of the original record companies in the world, along with Germany's Deutsche Grammophone and RCA Victor in the US. Coincidentally, EMI owns the rights to the iconic "His Master's Voice" label that RCA uses in North America. The Capitol Records building in Los Angeles is as recognizable as the Eiffel Tower. EMI owns Abbey Road studios, that's almost enough right there.

I sincerely hope EMI is saved from disaster. It would be a shame for one of the oldest and influential record companies in the world to slide into recorded music history. If it wasn't for EMI we might not have The Beatles or Pink Floyd or Bob Seger or Anne Murray or The Beach Boys or The Barenaked Ladies, I could on. And who knows the fate of its archive and its current artists if it goes bankrupt? I know the artists that are selling will survive on other labels, it's the marginal or niche artists that will suffer. The archives will most likely vanish into oblivion except for the choice few songs or albums that will manage to be scarfed up by licencing agreements and reissued, repackaged, and repriced. And EMI will become the label that once was.

The most frightening outcome of EMI's demise will be that only three major record labels will be left in the world. Add the fact the majors control over 90% of the market and EMI's failure will seriously impact the diversity of the recorded music available, which in turn will make it harder to find the kind of music you want to hear. And given the proclivity for the labels to cannibalize each other, three will quickly become two.

The end result will be pseudo-individualization at its finest.

Oh noes. Adorno was right!