Courtesy of GIGWISE...
EMI boss Guy Hands has once again enamoured himself with his employees by calling the label’s A&R men “lazy”.
Hands says he wants the job of spotting new talent to be handed over to “the suits” because they work a lot harder at selling the music.
Hands was speaking at the Super Return private equity and venture capital summit in Munich when he said : "The power and the decision has sat with the A&R man, who is someone who 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."
Hands added: "What we are doing is taking the power away from the A&R guys and putting it with the suits - the guys who have to work out how to sell music."
He also castigated some of EMI’s imprints for the money they spend on marketing, saying: "You might as well have put a £50 note on the CD - it probably would have done better."
oik
Cunt
.
He may as well just
fire everyone and burn the office to the ground really.
this mans a
bit of a fool
someone explain
the negativity towards him...
of course people becoming unemployed is is bad, but if they had gradually and effectively streamlined the business ten years ago- slowly and continaully adapting to the changes in the industry- there wouldn't be as big a problem nor fuss..
he just seems like the person who had to finally lop the head off the ailing, rotting corpse...
???
They released an
Art Brut single "by mistake" a few days ago. Awesome tactics.
i thought
this was quite a good news story.
In fairness to him
From the article I saw it's not the job of "spotting new talent" that he's handing to "the suits" but the responsibility for "marketing talent".
If true that changes the story quite considerably. Obviously it'd be odd to strip A & R men of the job to spot new acts as that is their job but I can see the argument that A & R men might not necessarily be the best people at finding the right marketing angle for a band.
The bottom line is that major labels are under a lot of pressure to change and Guy Hands seems to be trying to change things. Whether his way is the right way I don't know but I think a lot of artists/A & R staff are complaining because their jobs are being made less cushy than once were. Ultimately Hands is a businessman (and if you sign/work for EMI you should know you're signing for a big business rather than an indie label in it for the love of music)
It's easy to react to these stories but it strikes me he's just trying to do the job he's no doubt paid an extortionate amount of money to do as the head of a big business.
He owns EMI dude
No one is paying him.
Yes he is trying to change things but is showing a very, very scant understanding of the industry he is trying to survive in.
I assume there are other shareholders
who strictly speaking are paying him.
You may well be right tha the shows very, very scant understanding of the industry but nor does anyone show much really. I mean points he makes about certain EMI subdiaries spending 5 times more money on marketing than they actually receive in sales are basically common sense and that' the kind of thing he seems to be cracking down on here.
Um, he owns it so it is paying him money
and if he flushes it down the pan then all the money he spent on it goes with it.
It seems something
of a pet project to this man who owns pratically every Cinema in the UK as well as half of Germany.
I actually respect the fact he is trying to make it work as a business and yes, he is speaking a lot of sense.
But that is not going to stop the fact that this is going to cause a mass exodus of artists.
I think the fear here is for the EMI imprints like MUTE that are going to get seriously mashed by this guy.
They should have sold themselves to Warners...
They would h
I kind of agree with Paul
But to be honest what you've posted doesn't make any sense (which may or may not be your fault):
"The power and the decision has sat with the A&R man," right but: "who is someone who 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."
Well given that, what are the A&R guys doing wrong? He makes it sound like they know their stuff. It's not clear what he's taken away from them nor what they're doing badly compared to what the 'suits' can do.
Ahem...
"What we are doing is taking the power away from the A&R guys and putting it with the suits - the guys who have to work out how to sell music."
You gonna let an accountant do A&R?!
But that doesn't say what "power" he's talking about.
From the reports I read it seemed to be the "power" for deciding the marketing strategy. And I presume it wouldn't be accountants but marketing experts.
i agree with most of what you're saying
but isn't this story indicative of an even greater shift towards "the money men" deciding what to sign because of preordained marketing strategies, despite "discovering" music being an area where they have very little expertise? No-one's saying that the major labels are utopian artistic nurturers, but this seems to be taking things to the extremes
I should be clear here I haven't read the Gigwise version of the story
I've read the same story on a couple of other sites but what they seemed to be saying was that altough he acknowledges the A & R guys have a "knack of knowing what would sell", they're not actually very good at formulating marketing strategies themselves.
From that, my understanding of the story is that he still wants the A & R men to spot talent but, with them having spotted it, he want the "suits", rather than the A & R as one presumes is the case at the moment, to decide the marketing angle.
So they're still doing what they're good at but not doing the marketing bit (which he doesn't think they're good at).
Obviously it may be I've miisunderstood it and if the "suits" are being given the responsibility of finding new bands (which would be strange given he's acknowledged the A & R men are good at this) then that would obviusly be a strange and silly decision but that's not how I've understood the story.
To put this in context..
He also recently decided that taking the marketing for EMI's subsiduary labels out of their own hand and corporate sponsorship of albums seemed like a pretty neat idea.
It probably is if you're a businessman.
As I say above, if you sign with a major label with EMI you're pretty much doing a deal with the Devil. No band or label should ever go into a deal with a label of this size without realising that money is ultimately going to become the bottom line in every decision made.
That is true..
but this seems like an excercise in wheedling out the last possible hope for any decent, non HIGHLY commercial bands being on EMI.
Aye - and that is a real shame.
I'm guessing it'll come true of other labels soon enough. If the sponsorship of albums happens (which it probably will) and brings in money (which it probably will) and people accept it (which they probably will) then I'm sure the other majors'll adopt the same strategy.
or
its subsiduaries.
It's unpalatable, but it's common sense.
There is relatively little point in an A & R man coming bounding in and saying that they've discovered something great if it is quite clear that the band in question will only sell a very few records to a vanishingly small niche market.
Instead, it must be much more sound business to say 'That Amy Winehouse seems to sell a lot of records...let's push Adele and Duffy this year.'
i'm sure I read..
that he was actually putting more resources into A & R in an attempt to find new bands. But taking it from their current artists...hence the exodus of big names ?
EMI release singles without telling artists
Art Brut have claimed that their label, EMI, have digitally released their single 'Pump Up The Volume' without telling them.
The editor of the band's official website, http://www.artbrut.org.uk, writes: "Attention, the Internet!! It seems Art Brut have accidentally released a single. Yes, the rumours are true. But how could this happen, you may ask? Why were we not informed? Why was it not available in my local record shack, thrust pride of place along side the latest View recording? Well, my friends, pick up any thread of incompetence and it will usually lead you to a record company. That's right, it seems EMI have decided to release 'Pump Up The Volume' without informing either the band or myself, making any kind of wide scale promotion rather difficult. Adding to this curious new marketing stratagem of discouraging sales, EMI have chosen to make the song available via download only. So no luck in the record shacks either".
They
sure know how to endear themselves to their acts.
hahaha..
..if you think music in the UK is bad at the moment, just wait until 'the suits' start making some signings.
Drink that black worm Jism!!
Well
EMI are clearly a failing business, you can't just stick to a failing business practice and hope that things will turn out better for you, so something clearly needs to change.
The A&R guys at EMI are clearly pretty gash - how many new acts did they turn up in the top ten sellers of last year? However putting the 'suits'in charge of A&R and therefore removing all of your accumulated market knowledge would be would be pretty stupid, so i guess what he's looking at doing is redefining their roles and making sure they're focussed on doing what they do best.
Anyway, it seems a bit harsh to call him a cunt for doing this...