MIDEM(Net) Blog

Phil Hardy: The music industry in five years' time

The record industry in five years time: smaller, much smaller, but profitable

The collection societies in five years time: fewer, far fewer

The preferred storage and delivery format for recorded music in five years time: the encrypted card with the world’s repertoire will start to challenge downloads. The CD will still stumble on

The leading players in five years time: managers and music publishers, who will be able to offer exclusive access to and enhanced versions of the works of their artists; most of the other players will become secondary agents

The survivors in five years time: artists

Those who won’t be around in five years time: audio streaming companies.

Phil Hardy: A few words in defence of the majors

In 2008, the view calculated that the four major international record companies had a collective global market share of 77.3%. Downsizing that a little, say to 75%, on the basis that as a ratio the majors release fewer titles than the independents and you might expect when you turn to the review pages of the national press that around three quarter of the  reviews would be of albums on the majors’ labels and a quarter on independent labels. You’d be very mistaken.

This weekend I tracked the reviews of non-classical albums in the Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times and the Observer’s Music Monthly magazine. Here are the figures:

 

                                                 Majors                       Independents

Daily Telegraph                                 1                                  6

Sunday Times                                  2                                  7

Observer MM                                   18                                11

Total                                               21                                24

 

This means that of the 45 albums reviewed, in total only 47% were released by the majors, a figure that falls to 37% if one omits the 18 albums given two sentence reviews by the Observer’s Music Monthly magazine.

Phil Hardy: Speculation, speculation, speculation

In this first post from new MIDEM(Net) Blog contributor Phil Hardy, the editor and publisher of theview takes a long, hard look at EMI…

Here’s three events. Can the dots be connected?

Item One is from Digital Music News:

“Guy Hands, Terra Firma, and Citigroup are sitting on a toxic asset, one whose debt payments and financial liabilities are monstrous.  That demands resolution, and potentially paves the way for a WMG acquisition”. Never shy to suggest an alternative, Digital Music News  also repeated the rumour of  a possible sale of EMI Music Publishing - the diamond in the (slightly lacklustre) EMI crown - to the new Bertelsmann-KKR joint venture. WMG shares rose on news of the return of the possibility that it might be looking at EMI again (and again).


Item Two is an account of a recent speech by Guy Hands at the recent Private Equity Analyst Conference in New York:

Hands, the chairman and chief investment officer of Terra Firma, was emphatic about the role that luck and timing play in the success of investments. As an example, he pointed out recording company EMI. This has been a difficult investment for Terra Firma, which is currently negotiating with the company’s lenders on a debt restructuring.