Billboard Q&A: President of Digital Business for EMI, Douglas Merrill

2008-04-07 16:58

Antony Bruno of Billboard had a Q&A session with the new President of Digital Business at EMI, former Google CIO Douglas Merrill:

Where do you see the opportunities in the challenges the music industry currently face?

Music is a product that everybody loves. Everyone listens to music and everyone has music as part of their lives. It's pretty awesome to be part of an industry where the product is so universally loved. I believe people will pay money for artist's creativity. What I don't know yet is where they'll pay money, and how much, and for what kind of form. So our great opportunity is to leverage new technologies and new ways of thinking to find that. I'm really looking forward to this new world.

With Merrill in charge of their digital operations, EMI's reputation as the most forward-thinking of the big media companies seems safe for at least a while yet.

2008-04-07 18:22

Richaod

EMI seems like one of the more forward-thinking record companies around (e.g. first to drop DRM from the iTunes Store), so good for them.

I love what he said here:

What's your favorite band?
I'm a huge Sex Pistols fan. In my first meeting with Guy Hands we were in an office with a Sex Pistols record on the wall, so I gave him a him a spirited rendition of "EMI." I don't want the headline here to be "Douglas Can't Sing."

Every record company executive should learn their lesson from that song.

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