| Author | Message | ||
     kevin Member Username: Kevin Post Number: 2126 Registered: 05-2005 |
I still remember when that prick of a singer admitted he'd never heard of Echo and The Bunnymen five years ago. Avoid like the plague For Coldplay, it's another album, but for EMI, is it a leap too far? Tomorrow's release will be a make or break for Guy Hands' £3.2bn takeover Owen Gibson Wednesday June 11, 2008 The Guardian In an industry well used to hype, for once it was no exaggeration when EMI chief Guy Hands hailed it as "the most anticipated album of the year". Not only does Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends signify that Coldplay are at a stage in their career where they can get away with pretentious album titles, it could also set the tone for whether Hands' controversial £3.2bn takeover of EMI last year ultimately succeeds. Article continues The album, released in the UK tomorrow after a marketing campaign that included giving away the first single, Violet Hill, free and promoting a series of free concerts beginning in London on Monday, is being seen as a litmus test for Hands and his vision for a new EMI. The early signs are good, with 2 million downloads of the single appearing to drive online sales. After featuring the title track in its ads and delivering it immediately to anyone who ordered the album, Coldplay has racked up the biggest ever global pre-release sale on Apple's iTunes music store. Play.com, the online store, has revealed the album is outselling the rest of the top 40 combined. But retailers will be looking beyond the initial surge to whether the record has the "legs" to maintain a high chart position for months to come, appeal to casual record buyers and match X&Y's global 10 million sale. "We're optimistic. We've placed one of our largest ever orders for any album," said HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo. "They are one of the few artists that can actually drive people instore and sales online, and connect with a wider audience." Coldplay, who have a mixture of credibility and mass appeal matched only by U2 that makes them major label gold dust, embody the dilemmas facing Hands and his team as they try to reconfigure the company for the digital age. Does the label or the band and its management claim the credit for taking them from pasty students to A-list stadium fillers? And having reached that point, what value is there for Coldplay in remaining with their label when they could now duplicate most of its functions at a lower cost elsewhere - keeping a greater cut for themselves? 'Pay what you like' The fear for major labels is that more of their stars will follow Madonna and Jay-Z, who have signed with concert promoter Live Nation for $120m (£60m) and $150m respectively. At EMI, Paul McCartney left to experiment with a record label operated by Starbucks and Radiohead quit for their groundbreaking "pay what you like" experiment with In Rainbows and a new deal with an independent label. Yet away from the hype a more complex picture is emerging. "Everyone is waiting to see what happens with Madonna and Live Nation. We won't know the answers for a few years, and that will give a lot of people food for thought," said Ben Cardew, at industry title Music Week. In an age when there is more to be made from live performance and licensing than selling records, commentators are asking whether the aims of the band and their label are still aligned. "Ultimately, Coldplay don't really need a record label. It would be a huge blow for EMI if they lose a band like Coldplay, given how much they contribute to the bottom line. But aside from physical distribution, everything else you need you can pretty much build yourself. The big question is around what they do next," said Paul Brindley, managing director of digital music consultancy MusicAlly. While the industry buzzes with rumours that Coldplay have only one more studio album and a greatest hits to deliver on their current deal, it is understood the two sides are tied together for longer. So it must have been with some relief that Hands recently opened Q magazine to read a ringing testimonial for the "new EMI" from the band's guitarist Jonny Buckland. The last album, he said, was "finished under pressure" from the label but this time "they've been fucking brilliant and we've been feeling like a new band again, rather than a corporate machine". Band frontman Chris Martin said: "Being on a major label at the moment is like living in your grandparents' house. Everyone knows they need to move out, and they will eventually, but we kind of like our grandmother." All the rhetoric from Hands about behaving less like a "plantation owner", as he was dubbed by the managers of EMI act Robbie Williams, will be tested by the Coldplay campaign. While not quite copying Radiohead's gambit, the free download was a move that gave the group a direct relationship with 2 million fans. By making streaming tracks from the album available free on MySpace, EMI has helped head off the usual fears of pre-release leaks and piracy. Gamble Radiohead's gamble and other moves, such as the Raconteurs rush-releasing their album to critics and fans alike on the same day, have forced record labels to reconsider the monolithic marketing they attach to big releases. U2 manager Paul McGuinness yesterday became the latest to confirm that the internet had changed the game, although he ruled out following in Radiohead's footsteps for the Irish band's next album, saying the experiment had "to some extent backfired" because too many people still downloaded the album from filesharing sites. As in the film industry, music executives have long pledged to wean themselves off the need to rely on two or three "tentpole" releases a year and spread the risk by investing more intelligently in a range of artists in the same way as independent labels have done. "They are all still geared to the big releases. One vision of the future is that they will be able to invest in artists at a lower level and make a profit on, say, 200,000 sales. At the moment, they might need 1 million just to break even," said Cardew. Another dilemma for the majors is that they are trying to face two directions at once: making as much money as they can from older audiences still buying CDs from artists such as Coldplay, while also trying to sign new acts and develop new models for a generation for whom paying for music is anathema. They are faced with trying to claw back revenues lost to digital piracy and falling CD sales, while attempting to wrest back the credibility with consumers and artists lost in the 1990s thanks to cynical marketing and opaque contracts. Behind the scenes, Hands has overhauled the top team since he paid £2.4bn for EMI last year in a deal worth £3.2bn including debt. One outburst about "lazy" A&R men aside, he has also been less high-profile recently following the outcry that greeted his arrival. As he cut 2,000 jobs, respected figures such as Tony Wadsworth left. And digital gurus such as Douglas Merrill, a former senior Google executive, and Cory Ondrejka, one of the creators of virtual world Second Life, have joined in an effort to accelerate the transition. As they set to work, perhaps they'll be humming the chorus of one of Coldplay's earlier hits, The Scientist: "Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said that it would be this hard." | ||
| Catherine Vaughan Member Username: Catherine Post Number: 453 Registered: 05-2005 |
Hey Kev, I was going to read your mammoth post, but as soon as I read the word "Coldplay" I started to yawn, my eyes got heavy... I've still got about an hour's work to do tonight, and can't afford to fall asleep yet! I'll read it in the morning, when I've had a good night's sleep, and about 4 double espressos. |