New EMI chief Guy Hands hasn’t exactly made many friends in his time at the label, and his talent for alienating his employees continued to shine at yesterday’s Super Return private equity conference in Munich. When asked about the performance of the company’s A & R department, he blasted them, saying that the marketing part of their jobs could be much better handled by “the suits” because their marketing strategies were so bad, taping 50-pound notes to the outside of every CD the company was trying to sell would have not only caused said CDs to fly off the shelves more quickly, it would have been less costly than employing the 260-person-strong talent-scouting department. Hands is promising chart-topping singles from the label by this summer, although one wonders if he’s more comfortable making that particular bet because he knows that Coldplay’s new album is set to drop in May. [FT]
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(”Guy Hands”?)
Sigh, I guess it would be too easy for the folks at the top to exhibit their golden parachutes now, would it? Better to humiliate the underlings first.
Man. I can’t imagine why radiohead weren’t super enthusiastic about working with these guys.
@sparkletone: Yeah, but it’s not like he’s totally off-base with his statements. Was it last week that we had that article from the former A&R guy about what a crapshoot the whole process was? It didn’t even seem as though they were working hard at the guessing.