Jazz Hands

[webofevil]

The man who has taken over EMI and intends to shed a third of its staff isn’t just about the asset-stripping. Some of the changes Guy Hands is making, which are aimed directly at cost-cutting, make sense; duplication can indeed be cut right down, while the fact that 85 per cent of what the company releases makes no money and 30 per cent of its artists who receive advances never go on to make albums shows that things could definitely improve.

At yesterday’s meeting for all staff at the Odeon cinema in Kensington, however, he also presented other ideas for generating money in the harsh new music download world—among them, this:

“Football teams have very distinct corporate sponsorship. Why shouldn’t some of the leading bands have the same sort of relationships?”

As an example, he said EMI could help bands who would not make it on the international stage find local sponsors who want to break into the student market. [Financial Times]

[Poll #1122119]

Comments

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Corporate sponsorship of gigs is marginally, though crucially, different from corporate sponsorship of bands. The gig thing is already creepy enough. Beverly Craven’s career slump has been credited to the tour she did off the back of “You Saved The Best Till Last” which was sponsored by Lillets. Many of the tickets were to go to people who had entered competitions on Lillets packets, and Lillets branding was everywhere all over the venues. The tour was very undersold and the competition undersubscribed, and there was said to be a general unease among audiences at the sheer overall Lillets-ness of it (although I’m not aware that she ever went the full Scherzinger and showed off the new Lillets product she was wearing). Despite her continuing to churn out the ballads, her public apparently never felt the same about her again.