Charles Allen Becomes Executive Chairman of EMI Music

Update from EMI’s press release:

LONDON, 10 MARCH 2010 — EMI Music announces the appointment of Charles Allen as its Executive Chairman.  Charles has been non-executive Chairman of EMI Music since January 2009, chairing its Board and supporting the transformation of the business.

Elio Leoni-Sceti, EMI Music’s Chief Executive, who has successfully led EMI Music through the first phase of its operational turnaround, will be leaving the company on March 31st 2010.  Over the past two and a half years, EMI Music has become a stronger and growing company, with a talented senior team, significant creative success and a more rigorous approach to marketing and operations. This has resulted in increased sales, improved market share and industry-leading EBITDA margins.

Charles said: “Elio has done a great job. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him; he is a very talented executive and we all wish him well in the future. Our goals for EMI Music remain the same. I will support and guide the group’s strong team, keep EMI’s focus on creativity and superb A&R, and deliver a digital platform. This is a great business – our task is to ensure it has a great future.”

Elio added: “EMI is a wonderful business with a great team and new creative and operational momentum.  My job here is now done and it is time for me to move on.  It has been a pleasure to work with Charles and so many other talented and committed people. I look forward to seeing the company go on to further success in the future.”

Charles Allen CBE

Charles is one of Britain’s most experienced media executives. Aged 53, he was Executive Chairman of Granada plc from 2001-2004 and then Chief Executive of ITV plc from 2004 to 2007, having masterminded the creation of the business through the merger of Granada and Carlton Communications plc. He is currently a non-executive director on a number of boards and an advisor to Goldman Sachs.

New content and format coming shortly

I will update the blog with new content shortly. Lots of changes for the past months, I intend to change the blog to better reflect my interests and current activities. You can follow my twitter account in the meantime.

Cheers,

A.

Digital Music Forum

Next week I’ll be at the Digital Music Forum in LA! Check out the link…and I’ll be back with new things after the trip!

WMG back on YouTube by the year’s end

Warner Music Group is working with YouTube on a comeback that includes a premium player and artist channels. A deal has been done, although the two companies have a lot of details to work out.

This deal might represent a historical move towards reshaping the whole concept of a music label. The focus of selling high-priced CDs and rely on that sale as a main source of revenue is not a sustainable business model anymore. … Continue Reading

This and that or what happened lately

It’s been a while since I didn’t write anything here. Again, business school proves to be much busier than I thought. what happend in the main time in my favorite industry? Here are just a couple of things that caught my attention:

MySpace got some new improvements. News updates and more effective highlights on MySpace exclusives. Still not what I would expect , but it’s an improvement worth mentioning.

Apple announced declining iPod sales as consumers choose iPhones or iPod Touch. Is that because the built in WIFI capabilities? Does that mean the beginning of the end for mp3 downloading era? I will definitely come back and elaborate on this topic right after my Finance exam on Monday.

New Media Age surveyed its readers about how many of them would upgrade to the premium version of Spotify – with no ads, CD quality streaming and running on the iPhone as an app. One third of them would upgrade. Just to do the math, five million users, one third of which are premium subscribers, paying $15 per month equals 270 million in annual subscription revenue. That’s a nice figure considering how young is Spotify. Just as a reminder, U.S. total music sales in 2008 was 1,513 billion (BusinessWire). Projecting the same revenue for next year, means Spotify could capture almost 18% from the whole industry revenue!

See you all next week!

The Beatles remastered already leaked

It didn’t take to much for the entire The Beatles remastered catalog to leak. Set to be released on 09.09.09, the whole catalog was on the major torrent websites, music blogs, and hosting sites during the weekend. Some of the comments to the leaks argue that these are not the newly remastered tracks, but the ones released years ago. However, the files are there and millions of people are downloading them. While I’ve seen comments like “Awesome sound, I’ll buy it anyways when in stores”, I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of folks for whom the download will be good enough. … Continue Reading

Corporate friends help The Fab 4

“With a little help from my friends”. That could be the title of the upcoming marketing campaign supporting the launch of digitally remastered Beatles catalog on CD. The launch will coincide with the release of videogame The Beatles: Rock Band.

That campaign is unprecedented in the history of music marketing and merchandising. … Continue Reading

Apple approves the use of Spotify app – still not in the U.S.

Apple has approved the iPhone version of Spotify’s music streaming application! An Apple spokeswoman confirmed. However the app will run only in countries where Spotify is licensed – Sweden, Norway, Britain, Spain, Finland and France. … Continue Reading

Bandit.fm goes “live” in Australia

Just about 6 days ago I wrote about bandit.fm, the Australian online radio station which offers unlimited music streams for AU $10 per month.

Starting today, August 26 Bandit.fm online music offering is going “live.” That permits artists to upload and sell recordings straight from the mixing desk, with secured royalties! That’s what I called distribution chain optimization! Getting the maximum revenue by cutting the middle man! … Continue Reading

The battle against Pirate Bay – extreme measures

The news:

A major internet service provider in Ireland – UPS Ireland – has refused to block access to the Pirate Bay at the request of the four major music labels. UPS said in a statement: … Continue Reading