The Sad Fall of EMI
With yesterday’s sale (labels to Universal, music publishing to Sony/ATV), EMI, the storied British major label and home to the Beatles, is about to go away.
Like a brain dead motorcycle accident victim, its organs will live on in new homes, but something very, very British will die.
From The Guardian:
The journey to this point has been a rocky one that saw EMI cut its staff, previously occupying three huge offices across London, so they could squeeze into one building as the company’s global significance waned. For better or for worse, Terra Firma was there for the long haul and wanted to revive EMI as a company and as a brand – with no less an ambition than to reinvent it as the first truly 21st-century music company. Citigroup just wanted shot of it to the quickest and highest bidder, with no real care for the legacy EMI – with one of the truly great music catalogues in the world – represents.
This all marks the sad, almost apologetic, demise of a standalone EMI – a very British music company that took on the world and, for a time at least from the 60s to the 90s, was winning.
Interesting read:
http://in-the-cage.blogspot.com/2011/11/emi-post-imperial-reassurance-and.html