Hands off Baby Hands off
Talent for Finance
EMI are making headway again. Thanks to the new management.
Following on from his £3.2 billion purchase Guy Hands has got hands on and finally he is reaching the parts other financiers cannot reach.
It seems that running a label is just like any other business. Especially when it comes to dealing with the A&R side of life.
Guy recently described his version of a day in the life (sorry John and Paul), “[He] gets up late in the day, listens to lots of music, goes to clubs, spends his time with artists and has a knack of knowing what would sell.” There is a lyric if ever I heard one! Imagine that with a piano and wafting harmonies... mesmeric!
It is ironic that EMI is the label that launched the Beatles, under its Parlophone brand. Have they really got so far from the reality that talent no longer matters?
Of course I agree with the sentiments in part. After all I have spent and lost a fortune on backing dead horses but surely without the will to nurture and promote artists there is nothing left but back catalogue and no future for the music industry. But there comes a point when you have to say "HOLD ON THERE COWBOY!" and this is it.
Guy has accused the A&R guys of deliberate lunacy. He says that they could have done financially better if they had stapled $50 to each new CD. Of course they could, but so could Standard Oil if they hadn't invested in drilling new fields. The thing is you need to invest to create and that is the bit Guy has forgotten. Pete Pahides of the Times putit succinctly when he said "record labels, like football clubs, understand that a reputation for spotting and nurturing young talent is the basis of sustainable success. Once, the long view - artist development - was what made labels such as EMI so powerful. Now Hands speaks of “taking the power away from the A&R guys and putting it with the suits - the guys who... sell music”
Terra Firma (the vehicle that hands controls) have already sacked 2000 staff and I applaud some of that - the majors are overloaded with dead wood and it had to be done but attacking the root core of your industry is just insane. By all means shake the tree and get rid of the brittle branches but be careful not to chop the entire plant down.
By all accounts Hands is addicted to Karaoke - which is not the best lineage for a man involved in new music - but he is also the man that made Coldplay and Robbie Williams complain about maltreatment, so he can't be all bad. He has made oodles of cash in the past but he has also made some major blunders. (His deal to sell of Thresher liquor stores was a dud.) It remains to be seen what he can do now, but my advice for all of us in the indie sector is to ignore everything they are doing. It is big business and there are big business rules in play. It has nothing at all to do with us until they get it all figured out and we have something tangible to learn from.
Good luck Guy, you are going to need it!
Comments
Mr Arista?
Can't be all bad - he did sign Floyd didn't he? Seem to recall he had something to do with Santana as well.
To be honest he isn't really on my radar but I hear he was a tough bastard. But then again who isn't when they earn a million bucks a week?