Abort your current mp3 downloads!

[m_gigena]

EMI Plans Job Cuts

By TSC Staff
1/13/2008 9:41 PM EST         

Record company EMI Group plans to lay off up to one-third of its employees and drop artists from its roster, according to published media reports.
   
The restructuring, which could reduce the company's staff from 6,000 to 4,000, was engineered by Terra Firma Capital Partners, the private-equity firm that purchased EMI last year.

Citing people familiar with the plans, The Wall Street Journal reported that most of the job cuts would be made in EMI's recorded-music unit, not its music-publishing business. The Journal reported that EMI would announce the changes Tuesday.

The Sunday Times of London reported that Terra Firma CEO Guy Hands wanted to drop thousands of EMI artists.

EMI artists Robbie Williams and Coldplay are already protesting the plans, according to reports.

The company's reported restructuring comes as the music industry navigates a difficult environment. CD sales are in a tailspin, and legal downloads have failed to offset lost CD revenue.



My bullish forecast for 2008: Emi's Pop department gets a spin-off, and files bankruptcy in 2009.

[PerfectWagnerite]

So what? We are suppose to feel sorry for them. People lose their jobs all the time. What has EMI done lately anyway? All they have done is recycle 40 or 50 year old recordings in a desperate attempt to generate whatever money they can get. All the interesting new works are done by smaller independent labels nowadays anyway.

[m_gigena]

So what? We are suppose to feel sorry for them.

Well... if you had a heart, perhaps...

[Brian]

So what? We are suppose to feel sorry for them. People lose their jobs all the time. What has EMI done lately anyway? All they have done is recycle 40 or 50 year old recordings in a desperate attempt to generate whatever money they can get. All the interesting new works are done by smaller independent labels nowadays anyway.

Absolutely. EMI Classical's artistic stable at the moment (my Fall 07 Sampler CD included Evgeny Kissin, Natalie Dessay, Nigel Kennedy, Sarah Chang, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Gabriela Montero) lags behind nearly every one of the smaller independent labels. Except that now it looks like a lot of EMI artists will be working for the smaller independents ...! And what with the likes of Leonard Slatkin and Cho-Liang Lin already defecting to the new "majors" (Naxos, BIS, Chandos, Hyperion), the path is already well-traveled.

[m_gigena]

Well... if you had a heart, perhaps...

For example:

Citigroup May Write Down As Much As $24 Billion
Monday January 14, 8:19 am ET

Citigroup (C) could write down as much as $24 billion due to subprime and credit-related losses, CNBC has learned. In addition, the company could lay off as many as 20,000 workers as part of a comprehensive plan to slash costs and raise capital.

The plans will be unveiled Tuesday, when the banking giant reports fourth-quarter earnings. At the same time, Citigroup could also announce that it is cutting its dividend payment





Any feelings?

[Gustav]

For example:

Citigroup May Write Down As Much As $24 Billion
Monday January 14, 8:19 am ET

Citigroup (C) could write down as much as $24 billion due to subprime and credit-related losses, CNBC has learned. In addition, the company could lay off as many as 20,000 workers as part of a comprehensive plan to slash costs and raise capital.

The plans will be unveiled Tuesday, when the banking giant reports fourth-quarter earnings. At the same time, Citigroup could also announce that it is cutting its dividend payment


Any feelings?

of course you feel sorry for them, but we(U.S) are heading for a recession (or are we already there?). There will be more lay offs in the future.

But, should i feel dreadful? and if i don't, I have no heart? what kind of argument is that? This is how the capitalist economy works, boom-bust-boom-bust, i am sure they can find jobs else where, at least i hope.

[PerfectWagnerite]

For example:

Citigroup May Write Down As Much As $24 Billion
Monday January 14, 8:19 am ET

Citigroup (C) could write down as much as $24 billion due to subprime and credit-related losses, CNBC has learned. In addition, the company could lay off as many as 20,000 workers as part of a comprehensive plan to slash costs and raise capital.

The plans will be unveiled Tuesday, when the banking giant reports fourth-quarter earnings. At the same time, Citigroup could also announce that it is cutting its dividend payment





Any feelings?

That's corporate America. Nobody is guaranteed a job. When market conditions dictate that your job is no longer needed, you get the pink slip. That is reality. I am sure many that lose their jobs at EMI are highly skilled will find gainful employment elsewhere. There is nothing to feel sorry about. I have gotten laid off, others here have gotten laid off. It is nobody's fault, certainly not EMI. EMI's job is not to keep x number of people employed, this is not communism.

[Brian]

For example:




Any feelings?

Oh, sorry for the vagueness. I certainly feel bad for the thousands of people being laid off. I just don't feel for EMI.

[Scriptavolant]

That's corporate America. Nobody is guaranteed a job. When market conditions dictate that your job is no longer needed, you get the pink slip. That is reality. I am sure many that lose their jobs at EMI are highly skilled will find gainful employment elsewhere. There is nothing to feel sorry about. I have gotten laid off, others here have gotten laid off. It is nobody's fault, certainly not EMI. EMI's job is not to keep x number of people employed, this is not communism.

[PerfectWagnerite]

So in Italy noone gets laid off? Or if they get laid off the entire block sits around them and cry about it?

[Gustav]

So in Italy noone gets laid off? Or if they get laid off the entire block sits around them and cry about it?

how can you get laid off if you don't work and just sit around and eat and sleep all day?

[PerfectWagnerite]

how can you get laid off if you don't work and just sit around and eat and sleep all day?

Good point

[Scriptavolant]

So in Italy noone gets laid off? Or if they get laid off the entire block sits around them and cry about it?

Oh, I don't get it. You're wondering if people get laid off? Of course, they do.
Maybe they get laid off for:
1. Good reasons (to some extent, in certain cases we may have the opposite problem, that is: no reason is considered "good", and this is a problem infact)
2. A certain kind of minimum tutelage of the worker, which is infact different from an approach of the "who cares? it happens? it's nobody's fault" kind.

[Keemun]

It seems to me that EMI is faced with a difficult choice:

(1) It can restructure in an attempt to adapt to the changing business world in which it operates, laying off some of its employees in the process; or
(2) It can continue down the road it's been traveling, only to go out of business in a few years and lay off all of its employees.

Guaranteed jobs for everyone is not a feature of the capitalist economy in which EMI operates.  Yes, it is unfortunate whenever a person loses their job.  But sometimes it is also unavoidable.  I have no intentions of changing my music purchasing habits to "rescue" the unfortunate EMI employees.  Nor do I believe that it would work anyway.

[Gustav]

here is a better article from Wall Street Journal

In the latest effort to right EMI Group Ltd., the record company is set to announce tomorrow that it is laying off as much as one-third of its 6,000 employees, slashing marketing expenditures and dropping artists as part of a radical restructuring, according to people familiar with the company's plans.

The moves are part of an effort by Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd., the private-equity group that bought EMI last year for GBP 3.2 billion ($6.26 billion), to make its investment pay off. Most of the job cuts are expected to come from EMI's recorded-music operations, as opposed to its successful music-publishing operations.

The plans come as the music industry as a whole has struggled to return to profitability -- and indeed to prove itself viable in the long term. Album sales in the U.S., including online album sales, plunged 15% in 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and paid digital downloading hasn't grown nearly quickly enough to make up the loss from the decline in CD sales. Increasingly record companies have cast about for new sources of revenue, including getting involved in artists' deals to license their names and likenesses, licensing music to Web sites in exchange for a cut of ad revenue, selling T-shirts and the like. So far the results have been modest compared with the magnitude of the decline in sales that the companies face.

The planned restructuring has already drawn protests from managers of more than 20 prominent EMI artists, including pop star Robbie Williams and rock band Coldplay. A group of managers who have informally dubbed themselves the Black Hands Group -- after Terra Firma chief Guy Hands -- plan to discuss their grievances with EMI's new owners tomorrow, the same day the company plans to announce the restructuring at a London movie theater owned by Terra Firma.

EMI's new owners are unhappy with the relative size of the company's investments in talent scouting and marketing -- they believe EMI spends too much on marketing the acts already on its roster and not enough on finding new ones, according to a person familiar with the plans. And Terra Firma has said that as much as 30% of EMI's 13,000 artists never release an album -- which Terra Firma feels is too many unproductive artists, many of whom need to be cut.

If the cuts to marketing budgets, in particular, are as deep as some fear, Mr. Williams and Coldplay -- two of EMI's biggest acts -- are considering not delivering their next albums, which had been expected soon, according to people familiar with their thinking. Such a move could be financially ruinous to EMI's fiscal year, which ends in June.

Among the managers' complaints: Mr. Hands's desire to centralize marketing in a way that artists and their managers fear would mean less effective promotion in various international markets. Mr. Williams has an unusual relationship with EMI in which the two parties' fortunes are uniquely tied together in a joint venture funded by EMI; the venture's profit is split between artist and record company. Nonetheless, his manager, Tim Clark, last week blasted EMI's new owners as "bean counters" and threatened to withhold his client's next album.

An EMI spokesman dismissed Mr. Clark's grievances, made in an email and in interviews with British newspapers, as a play for extra cash. "It is an enormous shame that someone who has made so much money out of his relationship with EMI in the past has chosen to criticize the company before even listening to what its plans are," the spokesman said.

Several facets of EMI's plans are unclear, including the role of Roger Ames, the music industry veteran who has been running its North American operations since last year. Mr. Ames also recently assumed duties running artists and repertoire, or A&R, in the United Kingdom, following the ouster of Tony Wadsworth, who had run the U.K. operation. It isn't clear whether Mr. Ames is to be given a hand in running the company.

The music industry has suffered in recent years, but EMI has fared even worse than its three major competitors. Last year it slid to No. 4 of four music companies -- after Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group; Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG; and Warner Music Group Corp. -- from No. 3 in terms of market share and revenue, and saw its market share in its home country slide to 9% from 16%.