Guy Hands, the head of new EMI owner Terra Firma told the label's staff on Friday to "embrace digital or die" in a leaked memo.

Hands described Radiohead's self-release as "a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy".  He also questioned the traditional label model where a few successful bands finance a multitude of bad A&R choices. "Why should they subsidize their label's new talent roster – or for that matter their record company's excessive expenditures and advances?" asked Hands.

According to the Telegraph, Hands is also said to have been surprised at the size of salaries paid to second-tier executives.

His solution?  A more venture capital like model where the label finances a release or tour in exchange for a percentage of profits.

Link (Via HypeBot)

Yahoo! Music's Ian Rogers gave an inspirational talk to some music execs with two messages: one, I won't build DRM anymore for you, because Yahoo customers hate it; and two, let's focus on all the ways that free-as-in-speech music can kick enormous amounts of ass.

I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

If, on the other hand, you've seen the light too, there's a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.

By way of illustration (and via exaggeration), in a manner of speaking iTunes is a spreadsheet that plays music. It's context-free. You just paid $10 for that album -- who plays drums? I dunno, WHY DON'T YOU GO TO THE WEB TO FIND OUT, BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE CONTEXT IS.

Link (via O'Reilly Radar)