Welcome EMI. Nice Meeting You.

I want to officially welcome Elio Leoni-Sceti, Ronn Werre and Sylvia Coleman of EMI to my little site. I was in London a couple of days ago with a friend and we just  happened to bump into the three of them and I was introduced. They told me that they were avid readers so I wanted to give them the royal treatment. In all fairness, they were very nice and had a good sense of humor about my stupidity and abuse of EMI. So I guess that I have to reciprocate and be nice. By the way Sylvia is extremely smart and Ronn and Elio showed that they could roll. Oh, and Ronn. We should talk about that friend of mine that I mentioned.  :-)

So guys, can I still beat up on Terra Firma?

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

Well, its been reported that about 25% of the fans who bought tickets to the O2 shows in London are keeping their tickets as keepsakes instead of getting refunds. Go figure. And Randy recently publicly stated  that in addition to the fabulous wealth of video they have from the rehearsals and other shit will be released to help make up for AEG losses. And  there was talk of a tribute concert.

Well there turns out to be a little more to it. According to a friend of mine who is very close to Randy, all of this tacky shit will still leave a $30-$35 million shortfall for AEG that Randy has been ordered to fill. So the latest grand plan is to actually take this “tribute concert”, which is basically a clone of last week’s MJ memorial service, on tour! The funeral hits the road. My only question is will Randy schlep the corpse around with the show?

Tacky tacky tacky.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

Life Is Good At EMI

Here’s a really good one for you. Last week EMI sales reps started making calls to many if not all of their small accounts, mostly independent mom & pop stores, to tell them that they would no longer sell them product!!! Were these accounts bad payers? Nope. Would they not stock catalog or new artists? Nope. Then why in God’s name, you may ask,  would they simply cut loose paying customers? The answer given by sales reps — cost cutting.

So let me get this straight. EMI intends to save money by not selling their CD’s to independent retailers. Instead they want these retailers to go to one stops for their product.  These retailers are the only ones who buy catalog anymore. You sure can’t find it at Walmart and Best Buy. These are small businesses who have been loyal customers of EMI for 20, 30, 40 or more years. Like in the movie High Fidelity, these guys know every catalog number ever released. Every disk ever cut out of the catalog. They live and die by making personal recommendations to their customers–turning them on to new music. These shops are where music lovers go to discover and buy music. Several I have spoken with are so upset that they vow never to buy any EMI catalog again–or any new artist releases either. Only the certifiable hit product that they know will sell. They will no longer take chances on new EMI artists.

So I guess it just isn’t worth it to EMI to take these orders over the phone anymore. Too labor intensive. And after all, they’re doing so well that they really don’t need the business. Small potatoes. Let ‘em eat cake.

INTERESTING UPDATE: In making this policy change, EMI took the unusual step of notifying these retailers by phone instead of the standard letter. Could it be that they didn’t want anything in black & white?

Also, don’t forget that by being forced to buy from a one stop, not only does a mom & pop retailer pay more for his product (cutting into the already slim margins and pricing pressure from the likes of WalMart, etc.), but the one stops don’t carry nearly the depth of catalog that these guys need in order to make a living. And is this really a good strategy for EMI to introduce their new artists?  Another gripe they have is that now they won’t even get new and/or important releases (does EMI have important releases? Maybe the upcoming umpteenth release of remastered Beatles catalog) on Tuesdays, the new release day. It just makes it all the more difficult for them to compete and stay in business, even if it we were experiencing better economic times.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

Now that we have finally found the perfect business model for Twitter, counter revolution, along comes the NPD Group with one of those annoying reports that it just loves to churn out. This time NPD says that Twitter users buy 77% more digital downloaders  than non users. There’s a bunch of other stats, but this is the one that will get every major record label awash in hormones, panting and frothing, rushing to shove every piece of shit down the Twitter pipeline.

Once record labels discovered that MySpace was full of music lovers, they completely drowned the service with every amount of crap imaginable, turning it into a total mess. They had a&r people scouring the service, looking for the next big thing. I’m not sure that strategy has been successful, but as a whole MySpace has become completely diluted. Look for history to repeat itself.

If you weren’t sick of Twitter to begin with, you sure will be soon.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

A friend in London was telling me a crazy story. Everyone knows that EMI has been cutting staff like they were lepers over the last couple of years. During this “reorganization” period they apparently had decided to fire most of the digital media people with the intention of outsourcing it instead.

They’ve apparently now done a complete about face and are actually trying to rehire many of the same people they fired over the last year with the intention of bringing the digital media stuff back inside.

I don’t know about you, but my head is spinning so much that I think I’m going to throw up.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

Eeeeuuuuu. What's That Smell?

I know that I have been writing a lot lately about EMI. I know that it seems as though I’m beating up on them. But to paraphrase the great Willie “The Actor” Sutton’s response when asked why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is”.

Last week brought lots of news from the ongoing soap opera that is now EMI. Losses, write downs, artist discontent, and what seems like endless executive turmoil have marked the tenure of new owner Guy “Ham” Hands. Mr. Hands, when acting as CEO of EMI, alienated artists and managers to the point that it boiled over into name calling in the press and threatened liable suits. There exists in the UK music industry a group of very influential artist managers who are referred to as “The Black Hand Gang”, and they all have or had important clients signed to EMI. The group includes Jazz Summers, Tim Clark and David Enthoven, Brian Message, Dave Holmes and loosely works together as sort of an ad hoc artists’ rights group in regard to their EMI artists. The Black Hand Gang holds all of the EMI major artist assets and Hands did not make a very good impression on them. So he finally wised up, some would say too late, stepped aside and brought in the perfect man to save the business–an Italian executive experienced in marketing soap suds.

Now things seem to be lurching into high gear. The Rolling Stones, Supergrass and Radiohead left the label and Coldplay only delivered their last mega-selling album on the condition that EMI have absolutely nothing to do with the marketing. Coldplay would handle it themselves and EMI would foot the bill. Then Coldplay decides to give away their next album, a live throwaway compilation, denying EMI some much needed billing. But the UK’s Daily Mail broke the story last week that EMI’s young female superstar Joss Stone is so pissed that she’s actually willing to buy her way off the label! You know you have problems when an artist is actually giving money to a record company.

Prom King Guy With His Queen

To compound the situation, The New York Post also reported on a rift between the once good chums Guy Hands and soap selling EMI CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti. The Post reports that the two came into conflict over EMI North America COO Ronn Werre. It seems that Hands wanted to give Werre a “take it or leave it” offer once his contract had expired. Werre went out and got a better paying job at Sony. Hands got pissed and wanted Elio to hire back Werre at any cost. Elio was embarrassed and Sony sued. So the upshot is that Werre is swinging a big dick, Elio has been emasculated and Hands feels like Henry VIII with a new girlfriend. So don’t be surprised if Ronn Werre suddenly becomes Guy’s new Jane Seymour to Elio’s Ann Bolyn and is crowned queen of the EMI prom.

Jr. Moves To London

And just to prove that all of the action is in London these days, our genealogically advantaged little buddy Edgar Jr. is rumored to be moving there. So how does all of this play into Warner Music’s longstanding effort to gobble up EMI? Pretty well, I imagine. Jr. will now be siting on the sidelines with the ability to quietly stoke the overheated British press and further pick away at the ailing EMI. The Brits look upon EMI as a national trust in a sense. A part of the English fabric. So it will be interesting to see how Jr. will sow the seeds of public discontent with Terra Firma’s ownership of the company.

So who will be the next artist to jump ship at EMI? I have nothing but gut instinct to base this on, but my guess is Robbie Williams, arguably EMI’s biggest star. My guess is that Williams and his management are so disgusted with what’s been happening at EMI that they feel they just don’t need them anymore. Why? Because IE Music, Robbie’s management firm, has a longstanding business relationship with Ingenious Media, the top media investors in Europe and one of the few independent investment firms committed to the music space. And besides, the IE guys know what they’re doing. And they don’t need EMI. At all. And don’t kid yourself–EMI made plenty of dough on the first of what is now called a 360 deal. If you knew how much revenue Robbie Williams generates, mostly outside of the US, it would bring tears to your eyes.

When Terra Firma first took over I was in touch with Guy Hands and company. I was having one of several long conversations with one of Guy’s emissaries one day–they were still moving into the EMI building, it was that early– when I told him that everyone in the record business would do everything they could to make Terra Firma’s EMI fail. He was astonished and asked why on earth that would be. My answer was simple. Schadenfruede. In the music business its not good enough for you to succeed, you must also see your friends fail at the same time. That no matter how progressive EMI planned to be, they would meet resistance from every other label. It ain’t like running rest stops on the autobahn. As it turns out, I was wrong. They’ve fucked up so much that they didn’t need help from anybody.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

"Problem? What Problem? See? I Told You Everything Is OK."

The following is an internal memo from EMI’sElio Leoni-Sceti to his staff:

Dear all:

Over the past couple of days, there have been some misleading and inaccurate media reports about EMI’s financial position. You may receive questions from artists and business partners.

The facts are as follows:

EMI’s financial structure

EMI has an extremely stable and flexible financial structure. Our debt, which is provided by Citigroup, is what is known as “covenant-lite.” In other words there are no traditional covenants.

Normal corporate loans have covenants–if a company breaches them, the lender automatically takes control of the assets. Instead, under Terra Firma’s agreement with Citigroup, we have some financial ratios that we are tested on at certain dates. If those ratios are not met at the required times, our holding company Maltby injects small amounts of additional investment capital which are called “equity cures.”

Those equity cures were expected and are provided for. They come out of a fund that Terra Firma established for Maltby/EMI nearly two years ago in the full knowledge that, as we transformed the business, there would be a need for some additional investment capital. In the last financial year, we were on budget with our equity cures.

EMI Music’s financial performance

Thanks to your skill and hard work, EMI Music is delivering strong growth in operating profits and cash flow, and we have maintained market share, despite being in a period of major reorganization.

That period is now behind us, and we are looking forward to an exciting new chapter as we roll out our consumer-focused strategy designed to provide the best service to artists and customers.

I hope this will help you to answer any questions arising from the recent reports.

All the best

Elio

Editor’s Note: I wonder if Robbie Williams feels better now.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

This, of course, is not good news if for no other reason than it certainly doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence from artists and managers. Not to mention the message of weakness that it sends to the financial community and potential suitors. Peter Kafka recently ran an item suggesting that Warner Music hasn’t given up the ghost and is perhaps preparing to make another bid for the flailing label. Would regulators let such a deal go through? Probably. The merger of two weak companies could result in just one bigger weak company. Just ask Sony.

But let’s not forget about alternatives. As posed in a previous post, how about the US Treasury running EMI? Many have suggested that the government could actually do a better job at running the company. Maybe Barney Frank could become CEO.  Or a pre-packaged bankruptcy a la Chrysler and GM? Or maybe the company could be a consolation prize in the big EMI lottery.

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.

Last week the Sony Corp announced their own bad news, having lost over $1 billion in the last year. Although Sony doesn’t break out its music numbers, we all know that business has been bad all over. Sony has been on its own cost cutting rampage and has been tightening the reins on travel and entertainment expenses. They fired the head of their commercial music operation a couple of months ago, John Ingrassia. Ingrassia was a very highly paid holdover from the Don Ienner days. And they have been aggressively cutting executive pay. But something interesting happened last week. Sony Music sued EMI over an executive. Seems as though EMI exec Ron Werre had signed a deal to move to Sony to take Ingrassia’s spot in 2010 when his EMI contract was up. The deal was to pay Werre the modest salary of $1million a year for three years! Now that’s what I call cost cutting. But after Werre had signed his new Sony contract, he changed his mind and decided to stay at EMI where he was promoted to COO of North America.

Now, let’s examine this.  Is there any doubt that Werre is staying put at EMI for LESS than that $1 million annually that Sony guaranteed him? No fucking way. So that means that EMI is shelling out big bucks for this guy. Once again, terrific cost cutting, guys. Furthermore, is there any way that Werre would agree to stay at EMI unless the company indemnified him? No way. So in order to keep Werre around EMI will be shelling out more than $3 million in salary and another potential $3 million to Sony if they prevail, and, of course, attorney fees.

So my assessment is that Ron Werre must have 14 karat solid gold testicles since somebody thinks he’s worth over $6 million.

You just gotta love how stupid the record business is.

UPDATE: I was talking with a buddy of mine who is a high level industry veteran and he pointed out that there is a bright silver lining in this for Sony. According to my friend, Ron Werre could turn out to be Sony’s biggest profit center of the year!

© 2009, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.