ANOTHER MISSIVE FROM HANDS

In announcing the formation of two new major business divisions (EMI Music Catalog, Compilations, Studios and Archives (CCSA) and EMI Music Licensing and Synch (see related hitsdailydouble.com story here), EMI Group Chairman Guy Hands is starting to roll out his vision for the music division.

As has become his custom, he sent out a comprehensive e-mail to outline the changes to label artists and management, which we will highlight starting below.

I would like you to know that the big operational and strategic decisions with regard to the future of EMI are now behind us and, from hereon in, our focus will be on execution. I would like to thank everyone who wrote to me and my team for sharing their thoughts and vision for the business. While clearly we could not incorporate all the ideas proposed to us, we have taken on board many of the suggestions given to us by artists and their representatives and we all thank you for these.

EMI has now started the process required to move to a collaborative matrix structure, focusing on the three streams of business activity I announced in January: Labels/A&R, Music Services and Support Services. Today our staff will shift their reporting lines to a matrix system, moving from the current locally centralized model to a global functional matrix model. Staff will report first to their functional head, with a secondary reporting line linking them to their Country or Label Head.

As a result, we will start to feel the benefits of a global matrix organzsation almost immediately. Our aim is to think globally but act locally. This means we can act in markets using our global reach, leverage, speed and efficiency, without losing the many benefits of local presence which, we all know, is essential to this business.

As you can imagine, the real and difficult work starts now as we have to make individual decisions on people. We regard ourselves as a client business, where we have two major clients, our artists and the consumer. While we have a vast fund of information on what the consumer thinks about our performance, we have less on what our artists actually think. I would, therefore, like to invite you and our artists to give us any feedback which could help inform these decisions. Your comments will be assimilated with feedback from many others and will contribute to good decisions being made. We will treat any contribution you make in the utmost confidence. Clearly we will not be able to please everyone with all the decisions made but your feedback is crucial and will be taken into account.

We are now rolling out the strategy that will ensure a positive and successful future for EMI and our artists, please rest assured that we have systems in place to ensure that those of you who have releases currently active or soon to be released, will get the service and commitment you deserve. Please if you have any concerns with regards to this, let Caryn Tomlinson know and she will ensure that the appropriate functional head follows up with you.

We know this is a tough time for the music industry, for our staff, our artists and our partners, but we are working towards a more efficient, dynamic, innovative and financially successful EMI, which will benefit us all and address the challenges we all face. We are all impressed by the level of commitment our staff have been maintaining under pressure, the evidence of which is the encouraging results, chart positions and awards our artists are receiving around the globe. Last but most importantly I wish to thank many of you for the dignified and solid support you have shown over the last few months. Change is never easy and always disturbing but with your help we will come through stronger than ever.

With best wishes,

Guy