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"This change in structure clarifies the roles of our creative record labels and focuses them on the key activities that will make a difference in signing, developing, and marketing great talent."
——Alain Levy, EMI Recorded Music Chairman/CEO

IT'S A CAPITOL VIRGIN WORLD

EMI Recorded Music Chairman Levy Announces New World Structure for Company
When will EMI Recorded Music chief Alain Levy have time for a croissant break?

Fresh off the naming of his North American chief in David Munns and two new bosses at Virgin Records in Matt Serletic and Roy Lott (see hitsdailydouble.com, 2/6), Levy today announced "a significant change in the structure and operating philosophy for EMI companies worldwide."

The move will position Capitol and Virgin as the two global creative units in each territory under national EMI Recorded Music management, with back-office services fully integrated.

The goal of the redesign is to "increase the efficiency of the company's operations in each country while simultaneously increasing the emphasis on the creative aspects that drive growth in the business." In other words, turn this sucker around and start making money.

As part of the restructuring, a single managing director will be appointed to head each country who will be responsible for all of the EMI Recorded Music activities within that country.

Back office operations of the labels in each country will be integrated into a shared services department, including sales, finance, IT, human resources and catalog exploitation. The latter will be renamed EMI marketing. All of the shared services functions will report into the country managing director independently of the labels.

Each country will have two independent, creative labels with responsibility for artist signing, marketing and promotion. One of the labels will be Virgin, with its existing artist roster. The other, which will include all of the EMI Records artists, will be renamed Capitol. The EMI name will only be used for corporate and shared services activities. Label imprints, such as Parlophone and Innocent, will exist underneath the Capitol and Virgin labels.

The restructuring has already begun at EMI Recorded Music UK, where new chairman of EMI Recorded Music Continental Europe Emmanuel de Buretel (see hitsdailydouble.com, 1/18) will announce implementation of this structure across Continental Europe, including the nomination of the new EMI country heads.

In the U.S., newly appointed Chairman/CEO of EMI Recorded Music N.A. Munns is also designing a shared infrastructure, the details of which will be announced in the coming weeks.

In the rest of world, most companies, including Japan, had a similar structure to the one announced above and will see no change in their basic organization, except for the change of name from EMI to Capitol at the label level.

EMI Classics will not change its name or its label brand.

Levy said: "This change in structure clarifies the roles of our creative record labels and focuses them on the key activities that will make a difference in signing, developing, and marketing great talent. Capitol, which has a long and rich musical legacy, and Virgin will be established as the two global brands for our creative activities that represent different identities with their own style and rich histories of creativity and great music.

"In addition, the new structure enables us to achieve greater effectiveness in the exploitation of our music assets at a reduced cost base by having one sales force and a sharing of the functions that enable us to operate our business but which have no impact on our creative and market success. Once it is fully implemented, I believe EMI will be best positioned to achieve a major increase in market share and performance."

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