EMI

UK music business EMI Group has agreed to be bought by private equity firm Terra Firma for £3.2bn including debt.

The group, whose artists include Robbie Williams and the Beatles, has been the subject of bid speculation for the past year as its business has struggled.

It previously rejected a takeover bid from US industry rival Warner Music.

The firm has seen sales decline sharply in recent months and said on Thursday that it had made a £260m loss in the past year.

god loves a private equity takeover

Here come those Beatles remasters to save the day.

EMI, home of Beth Orton and Badly Drawn Boy.

Well, not home exactly. They actually have their own houses.

But for how much longer?

It's been noticable over the last few years that EMI's major releases have been complete shit. And their minor releases. And their remasters. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

? Van der Graaf Generator, Groundhogs & High Tide remasters were very good, I thought.

And the Kevin Ayers remasters-- very nice. But copy-protected:(

Anyway, I'm glad this didn't result in another merger, at least.

Classical mavens will have a lot to say about this. Esp. British ones.

emi>caroline>carpark>acute

The Fire Engines CD will save the company.

EMI's remasters are obviously not shit, considering EMI owns the rights to most of the greatest music that has been made throughout history.

I mean, EMI and Virgin between them. There isn't much great music left that isn't (at least by now) licenced to one of those two.

weird, how did I not know that there was some sort of relationship between Carpark and Caroline/EMI? I guess that explains some of the success their artists have been having, though.

Geir, listen; on a technical level a lot of the EMI remasters have been pretty sonically butchered compared to labels like Columbia Legacy and Revola. Love by The Beatles excepted. Not that you'd notice, because you're an idiot. Their new releases have been pretty awful, too. For about the last three years when I've seen "Music by EMI" on a CD spine my gut reaction has been "oh no". I am not talking about the quality of The Beatles' or Blur's back catalogues. I am talking about remasters and current releases being squashed to shit at the mastering stage and packaged badly.

But they've got unlimited supply!

Yes but they're missing one clue how to use that supply.

caroline distributes lots:

http://www.carolinedist.com/labels/default.asp

who the hell are Terra Firma?

Just a private equity thing, they don't care about music especially, only about revenue, hence the other companies they invest in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Firma_Capital_Partners (they also have shares in Thorn, that split off from EMI in 1996)

http://www.terrafirma.com

mmmmm, fishy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMI#Terra_Firma_takeover_proposal :

On June 14, 2006 EMI received an initial unsolicited alternative proposal from Warner Music to acquire all of the share capital of EMI for 315 pence per share in cash. The Board of EMI considered this proposal from Warner Music to be wholly unacceptable and unanimously rejected it.

Why the Board rejected the higher offer for 315 pence per share and after that recommended the low Terra Firma offer of 265 pence per share is unknown as it not a decision in the immediately obvious best interest of shareholders which they are elected to represent.

EMI are fucked, and crooks, and fucking crooks, and idiots.

Because if they sell to a 'firm', and the EMI Music continues to lose money, they could buy it back again, one day.

Sell to WB, they'll subsume it entirely, and it'll never be seen again!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7074447.stm

EMI 'artists need to work harder'

The new owner of the music group EMI has said some of its artists are not working hard enough and its labels will become more picky in future.

EMI was bought by Guy Hands' Terra Firma private equity house in August for £2.4bn.

In an internal memo obtained by the Financial Times, Mr Hands set out his plans for the future of EMI.

"Some (artists) unfortunately simply focus on negotiating for the maximum advance," he said.

Unlike the investment banking world that Mr Hands is more used to in which bonuses are linked to performance, advances are paid to artists regardless of the success of their albums - "advances which are often never repaid", the memo bemoaned.

Mr Hands said that eventually it would "be open to us to choose which artists we wish to work with and promote".

No specific artists were named in the memo and it added that "many spend huge amounts of time working with their label to promote, perfect and endorse their music".

Mr Hands also plans to find better ways to reward executives and encourage them to work together.

He blamed the current situation on "a compensation and management system put in place over the last 20 years which does not encourage the right behaviours or reward the right actions".

One of the low points for EMI came in 2001 when it paid £19m to get out of a contract with Mariah Carey, one album into a five album deal.

Ms Carey went on to have one of the top-selling albums of 2005 with EMI's rival, Universal.

Hmm, those last two lines seem to suggest that EMI couldn't promote/generate a new hit if they had one.

http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/news/article3124273.ece

spot the err.

oh, I was just going to say I forgot to add the url squarebox thing, but it worked anyway!

Robbie Williams was paid a reported £80m when he signed for the label in 2002.

wtfffffff

By not working hard enough does he mean an album more than every 3/4 years or doing more for promotion and stuff?

Doing more for promotion and stuff.

No more indie bands signing to EMI and doing things their own way then. They gonna have to prostitute themselves.
And even more pressure to have hit albums then also. One flop and you're for the drop..

* Badly Drawn Boy

Real name Damon Gough, he took his stage name from the title character of the TV show Sam and his Magic Ball. His early career was replete with success, including a Mercury Music Prize. But following a lucrative and highly publicised switch to EMI, his popularity has dwindled. His last album, Battle of Normandy, released three years ago, only reached No 17 in the charts. Little acclaimed music has come from him since.

But following his inability to write any more decent tunes, his popularity has dwindled.

But following his inability to write any decent tunes, his popularity has dwindled.

* Air Traffic

The Bournemouth rockers used to practise next to Hurn airport, and took their name from the interference on their amplifiers from passing planes. High hopes were raised with their single "Shooting Star", which the Radio 1 DJ Vernon Kay made his "weekend anthem'. Their debut album, Fractured Life, was massively hyped ahead of release but proved a dismal flop, reaching only No 42 in the UK charts.

Who??

i have two air traffic singles, the first is great and the second is ok. reminded me of crashland, (who i love) but not quite as good

is there a complete list of current EMI acts that we can pick over?

Carey was discarded after her widely-promoted Glitter album sold only two million copies.

It was the fact they gave her shitloads in advance though wasn't it? Mind you do acts actually get these big advances in reality? Do they have to sell x amount of albums to collect the full amount? So it's not an advance really at all.

it depends. some of it will go to the manager and other employees of the band, some will go to recording costs, sometimes it will be doled out on a periodic basis, sometimes it is partially contingent on the delivery of material..

So robbie didn't get £80m then.

The Floratone album is on EMI in the UK, but that doens't really count.

So what was the most recent hit with the EMI label on it?

"Anarchy in the UK", that's what!

Duran Duran were on EMI. Blur also had the EMI label somewhere although they were on Food.

And Bowie's "Let's Dance" album, which was his bestselling ever, was on EMI.

MOUNT EVEREST IS A TALL MOUNTAAIN.

WEATHER TO FOLLOW.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30400-1300264,00.html

with the racks stuffed to max with unsold copies of Rudebox, i'd say EMI aren't going to be overly stressing about it.

Funnily enough I really like Rudebox now. Definitely a grower.

oh dont get me wrong, i think its a very entertaining album - i love parts of it more than anything else he has done, but it didn't exactly help the finances of EMI did it !

Nor did paying Mariah Carey however many Third World GNP averages they paid her just before her breakdown.

But following his inability to write any decent tunes, his popularity has dwindled.

-- Ned Raggett, Monday, 5 November 2007 02:20 (2 months ago) Link

i feel i have to rep for 'once around the block' here

Agreed. In fact the whole of his first album is very, very pleasantly tuneful.

which all makes the fact that the average indie band Tiny Dancers getting 750,000 advance (according to a snippet i read in Q - so it must be true!) all the more mad.
suspect they will be the last band that get such a payout from EMI in quite a while.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article3168528.ece

so last week Guy Hands mentioned that the suits were going to be in charge of A&R at EMI

meanwhile:

EMI have apparently just dropped LCD Soundsystem - i believe that DFA had a distribution / marketing arrangement with EMI

http://creativeclass.typepad.com/thecreativityexchange/2008/03/music-biz.html

meanwhile EMI America have signed that bland AOR Prog band Asia

http://tinyurl.com/3xvndy

After turning around the music industry, Hands intends to deal with the aviation industry where he wants to phase out pilots, letting the air stewardesses take on the role in-between trolley runs. After that he will tackle the financial burden of global terrorism by providing cardboard cut-outs of towns for the suicide bombers to target.

erm... zing!