Media Wonk

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Googling EMI - April 2, 2008

Media Wonk has never meant or spoken with Douglas Merrill, so he has no idea what, personally, might have motivated him to leave his job as CIO of Google and join the struggling music giant, EMI as president of EMI digital. But it's not hard to see why EMI would be interested in hiring him, and why his skills could be a very good fit with the record company.

As CD sales plummet and the music distributors look more and more to subscription plans, licensing deals and other types of service-based business models, music is becoming an IT-driven business. In the future, its scalability, as well as operating margins, will depend in large measure on how efficiently an enterprise can manage its myriad licensing deals, across multiple platforms, implicating multiple rights-holders and requiring complex collections and payment processing. An individual distributor's market share, in turn, will depend less on the size of its roster, or how many labels and imprints it distributes, than on its ability to sign and integrate new such licensing deals.

Critically, a music distributor's technology platform will have to be responsive to direct consumer inputs, another area where Merrill's Google background could be useful. Meeting consumer demand will mean supporting on-the-fly customization of offerings, search queries, social networking and other outside-in features of the digital world.

In the long run, getting those things right will do far more for the record companies than suing their customers.
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