EMI Poaches Google Exec
Posted Thursday 3rd April 2008 by Tom P in SEM News.
After the sale of the EMI record label last year for the gargantuan figure of £3.2 billion it was doubtless that changes would be made to the company structure. The private equity owner, Guy Hands who has been implementing strategies to revive the fortunes of this flagging company and return it as a bellwether of the music industry, has recently appointed a former Google senior executive to run the company’s digital strategy.
Having created this new post for Douglas Merrill, who led Google’s impressive stock market gains throughout 2004, Hands will be hoping he can do the same for EMI. Mr Hands has welcomed Merrill as a “proven agent of change” who has focussed on making Google’s customer approach more usable and effective. The signs are that Mr Merrill will be creating tools, much like he did at Google, which will make consumer actions easier and more efficient.
Mr Merrill is also a music lover and understandably excited at the opportunity for working with this music industry giant. His dedicated customer focus will hopefully bring restored prosperity to the British recording company. Fundamentally his work will focus upon increasing EMI’s online operations as part of an all encompassing restructuring effort. Not all of EMI’s staff will be happy with the changes however; a streamlining initiative is set to cut around 2,000 jobs to save an annual £200 million.
Although some artists signed by EMI are critical of the changes as it may harm their revenues from sales and merchandise, it is a process that must be undertaken for the company to modernise. As long as they can carry on signing some of the biggest names in the music industry EMI should be able to weather the storm and come out on top.
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