EMI Records Are Really Good Dudes
From undercover.com.au:
Last week, EMI Records sued 30 Seconds To Mars for $30 million dollars for terminating their contract when renegotiations failed.
Let’s repeat that point. A record company that sold more than $20 million worth of units for band they haven’t paid one cent to is now suing the band for $30 million for not giving them the chance to do it again.
The band’s singer (and sometimes actor) Jared Leto commented on the band’s MySpace:
If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier.
Full transcript here.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t listen to the band, nor do I have any interest in them, but.. wow. This is the biggest fuck-you from a major label to a popular band and their fans in recent memory.
It appears that little or no thought has been given to how this appears to the music-listening public. Understandably – though batshit insane as it appears – the label have calculated that they think they’re entitled to thirty million dollars. Their other requests include: (bolding is mine)
…the new regime at EMI firing most of the people we know and love, wanting to place advertisements on our website, EMI owning 100 percent of the masters of our record…forever, and basically having a revolving door of regimes at the company made it easy to not want to continue as is.
I find it really hard to believe that the people in charge of these institutions think that they’re being reasonable. That they’re still relevant. That they don’t appear as lumbering dinosaurs to intelligent music consumers.
And yet, here we are. Golf clap for EMI’s total assholery. Alongside the other members of the”big four“, they’ve been polishing the brass on the Titanic for years. Since Shawn Fanning released a cute little program.
Surely, the iceberg can’t be far off.
Wow. It is getting bad in the music industry and they are sinking so fast, that they do not have time for rational decisions. Even big exec’s like Lyor Cohens of Wanrner is dumping his stock.
Treating the people who make you money (the bands) and the people that pay you money (the fans) like shit is great customer service. These companies need to get some Web 2.0 PR people and start working on their brand.