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Guy Hands: "It Means Abortive & Replaceable"

29th February 2008 | by Aidan Williamson

You're playing your first big gig with your band, looking out, you see reams of suited-up middle-aged men, sweating in their anxiety to access their blackberry's without the scum touching them.

This is the future of the music industry as EMI head Guy Hands sees it. He launched into a stinging attack on the A&R division of the label during a conference with staff at a London cinema. He went on to scorn the life of the typical A&R employee as regards his work ethic.

"[He] gets up late in the day, listens to lots of music, goes to clubs, spends his time with artists and has a knack of knowing what would sell." Hands wants to place the emphasis on the selling part, which he feels executives are much more equipped to do. The central tenant of the message being, 'We will sign any load of crap that we want to, and you will buy it. The demographic surveys say you will'. Wait... what's changed again?

What does this mean for good music? EMI have just dropped LCD Soundsytem, artists extraordinaire who were responsible for one of the greatest albums of 2007. He told music managers that only 3% of the acts on their label are making a profit and he intends to lay off nearly 2,000 more people this year as part of his coffin nailing.

How exactly the label fails to make a profit despite each artist being required to pay most of the expenses involved in an albums production remains to be seen.

After turning around the music industry, Hands intends to deal with the aviation industry where he wants to phase out pilots, letting the air stewardesses take on the role in-between trolley runs. After that he will tackle the financial burden of global terrorism by providing cardboard cut-outs of towns for the suicide bombers to target.

* Photo by Reuters

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