A lot of stories circulating recently about EMI, the esteemed record company that was bought by a private equity firm, Terra Firma, with lots of bands saying that Guy Hands does not understand the music business. This after he said that he would sack a lot of them and not pay them more than they deserve. I think his main point is that they spend too much on too few bands, and I guess he wants to diversify.
There is an article on the NME website about The Verve album possibly being delayed. Obviously I am well pleased with that. Not.
EMI owner Guy Hands told The Guardian: "Roughly 85 per cent of what EMI does get to release never makes a profit, in part because of the cash spent signing bands and partly due to ill-made bets on the number of CDs the market requires for particular acts."
Well seeing as EMI generally makes a profit (at least in the good old days) I assume this goes some way to explaining why CDs are so expensive: 1) because they waste lots of time signing rubbish bands, jumping on the bandwagon no doubt 2) they snap up people like Robbie Williams for ridiculous sums of money, when he is going out of fashion (step forward Mariah Carey too who cost Virgin, part of EMI $108million in total) 3) they then overpress the number of CDs, so we have to pay for the CDs that are getting chucked.
I am thinking that if Sainsburys over-order on their Ferrera Rocher's, they don't overcharge people on milk to make up their losses. Or do they?
P.S. I don't buy the Guardian. I just used Google.
You do buy the Guardian. I can tell because you look like a Guardian reader.