Emi Records Group

Zutaut to Head New EMI Record Company: EMI Records Group, North America, said it formed a record company that will be headed by Tom Zutaut, former head of A&R at Geffen Records. Zutaut, 35, will be chairman and chief executive of the new label, reporting to Charles Koppelman, chairman and chief executive of EMI Records Group, a unit of London-based Thorn EMI. EMI said Zutaut is credited with signing on artists such as Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians for Geffen.

EMI Group Ltd., the music company controlled by Terra Firma Capital Partners, said its recorded music unit swung to a profit in the fiscal first quarter after it cut jobs and stemmed excess shipments of CDs. EMI's recorded music division earnings before interest, tax, depreciation amortization totaled 59.2 million pounds ($118 million) in the three months through June compared with a loss of 45.1 million pounds a year earlier, the London company said. Revenue grew 61% to 288 million pounds.

In regard to EMI Records Group, North America, in Pop Eye's annual record industry roundup ("Reassessing the Labels After a Record Year," Jan. 16), there were obvious problems with your understanding of the structure of our company. In April, Charles Koppelman was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of the newly formed EMI Records Group, North America. This combined EMI's labels and operations from all across North America (which include Capitol Records; ERG--Chrysalis, SBK and EMI Records; Blue Note; Liberty, and others)

In a dramatic demonstration of the economic toll of digital piracy on the music industry, EMI Group is expected to fire more than a quarter of the London-based company's employees and radically alter the way it does business to further cut costs.

She has been dead for four years. No one in her family who says this seems to believe it. Yet there's her bronze statue, by the ocean, a life-sized Selena Quintanilla Perez gazing out at the water. One thousand, four hundred and sixty-eight days. And nights. The sea comes, the sea goes again, lapping at the life left on this shore. Father, mother, brother, sister. The breeze comes hot here. Even in winter it is thick and moist.

Thousands of miles away, in a remote desert at the end of the Earth, a secret rendezvous altered the future of the $40-billion music business. On Sept. 22, top Time Warner Inc. executives picked the ancient Chinese city of Kashgar, one of the least accessible spots on the planet, to pitch the idea of merging the media giant's beleaguered record division with Britain's struggling EMI Music.

Janet Jackson and the Spice Girls may be EMI Group's top-selling acts, but the woman that everybody in the giant British music conglomerate is talking about is an executive named Nancy Berry, wife of the company's worldwide president. In fact, everybody in the music business is talking about Berry, now the vice chairman of EMI's Virgin Records division, whose rise in the company quickly followed her husband's ascent this summer to the top music job.

Napster Inc. said Monday that it reached a tentative settlement with a major music publishing group, a deal that provides both a sizable cut of royalties for songwriters and a precedent for how publishers and labels would divide online music revenue. Under the tentative pact between the controversial Redwood City, Calif.-based online song-swapping service and the National Music Publishers Assn.

Nearly a year ago, Bertelsmann Chairman Thomas Middelhoff bragged of a business plan that would transform the Gutersloh, Germany-based media giant into the world's preeminent music company. The reverberations from that pronouncement are now being felt throughout the music industry. The 45-year-old German executive stunned rivals this month when he announced a pair of eye-popping alliances with British music behemoth EMI Group and controversial Napster Inc.

EMI Group named media expert John Rose on Monday as executive vice president of the British music corporation, home to such acts as Mariah Carey and Sparklehorse. Rose comes to EMI from McKinsey & Co., where he was a senior partner who helped lead the consulting firm's global media and entertainment practice. Based in New York, Rose will start in January managing an operational review of EMI's recorded music business and overseeing the corporation's strategy and business development functions.

EMI Group, alleging copyright infringement, sued the founder of a San Diego online music provider, seven years after another Internet firm founded by him paid more than $100 million to end similar lawsuits. Michael Robertson and his company, MP3Tunes, were named as defendants in a complaint filed by EMI labels including Capitol Records Inc. and EMI Virgin Music Inc. in federal court in Manhattan. The suit seeks undetermined damages and a court order blocking Robertson from infringing.

The new owner of EMI Group has said that he will drop artists he believes are not working hard enough and will overhaul the company's executive pay packages. Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. bought EMI, which has Coldplay, the Rolling Stones and Kylie Minogue on its books, for $4.9 billion in August. In an internal memo confirmed by Terra Firma, the private equity group's chief executive, Guy Hands, also threatened to withdraw stars' lucrative advances if record sales were disappointing.

Private equity fund Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. stamped its authority on EMI Group, announcing Wednesday the departure of EMI Chief Executive Eric Nicoli and outlining a new focus for the music label of the Beatles, Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. Terra Firma, which paid $4.9 billion for EMI, said Nicoli and Chief Financial Officer Martin Stewart would be out before the takeover's completion and the company's delisting from the London Stock Exchange next month.

Struggling EMI Group, the world's fourth-largest record label, has hired the Los Angeles office of global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi to help market its music. The move, announced Tuesday, comes as music labels are trying to tackle declining sales and two weeks after EMI accepted a buyout offer from private equity group Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd.

Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd.'s 2.4 billion-pound ($4.9 billion) offer for EMI Group was accepted by 90.3% of EMI shareholders, ensuring that the firm can get financing to buy the record label of the Beatles. The London-based buyout firm received "valid acceptances" from the holders of 732.16 million EMI shares. The firm needed 90% support to gain financing from Citigroup Inc. The acquisition marks an end to seven years of attempts by EMI and Warner Music to buy each other.

Warner Music Group Corp. said it was considering making another offer to purchase British record label EMI Group. In March, Warner Music offered to purchase EMI for $4.2 billion, but the bid was rejected. In May, EMI agreed to be purchased by private equity firm Terra Firma for $4.7 billion. Warner Music said if it made another offer, it would be pre-conditional to obtaining the necessary antitrust clearances.

The Beatles' Apple Corps has settled a royalties dispute with record label EMI Group, the two companies said Thursday, raising hopes that Beatles recordings may soon be legally available online. "It was settled on mutually acceptable terms last month," Apple Corps and EMI said in a joint statement. They refused to provide details of the settlement.

Apple Inc. and EMI Group want digital music fans to pay more money for more freedom. EMI, the world's fourth-largest record label, said Monday that it had agreed to sell its 150,000-song catalog through Apple's iTunes store without the anti-piracy software that limits which devices can play digital music. EMI acts include Coldplay and the Rolling Stones -- only the Beatles were excluded from the deal. The companies plan to charge $1.