The EMI situation is getting dire, but is there a workable game plan among the top brass?
Statements recently issued by EMI Music CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti offered some realism, as well as further cause for concern. “Looking at the music industry, which has become something of a bellwether for other media businesses, we have a situation where seventy percent of music consumption is digital and yet only about twenty percent of music company revenues are derived from digital,” Leoni-Sceti stated. “Music is in demand and the demand is growing all the time, but we’ve clearly lost touch with our consumers.”
And the solution to reengaging and drawing revenues from an audience accustomed to free? Leoni-Sceti offered some rather obvious statements, with few concrete steps. That includes “listening to the desires and needs of consumers and delivering new products and services that they want to buy,” while “complementing our artists’ creativity with our own skills in innovation,” the type of platitudes that are impossible to disagree with but hard to implement.
The comments were made ahead of an appearance at the Creativity and Business International Network (c&binet) Forum, happening October 26-28 in Hertfordshire, UK.