Under Merrill, EMI's digital unit--in the year he was there--hadn't exactly hit any home runs. There were few awe-inspiring moves, or at least little the company announced publicly. In October, EMI said that Merrill's unit was planning to launch its own music service. The label markets its own stars directly to the public and is supposed to be more of a testing area where the record company can learn more about digital retail. The site is still in beta.

Not a bad idea, but it didn't exactly drop any jaws.


"to launch its own music service" to sell direct to the public:
This was a stupid idea when the majors tried this ten years ago. This only works for small markets / special products (special shops from Blue Note or EMI Classical).

Even more foolish is the idea to use EMI.com as a "testing area". If EMI/Terra Firma wants to learn what the public wants, they just have to look at the (some legal/more illegal) onlineshops/portals/webcasters/p2p-systems/blogs etc) that are out there on the internet. Since 1995.

Merrill is apparently off to Sony, even more of a slap in the face to EMI...

5 years ago I would agree with you DJ but not now.
EMI are right. It is time to launch a bespoke label portal but in the spirit of web 2.0 make it widget friendly. Also the other majors and merlin should link to one another and create a common search engine that would enable everyone to find every music released via one interface.

They can already do this with Google but this would be legal and would turn up in all the search engines and would be the reason to shut down illegal services as there would be no more excuses to visit Pirate Bay et all. Well done EMI and stick to your guns. The paltry royalties from Youtube etc is the reason why this is now important.

Your music on Your site linked to a powerful music search engine. That is all that is needed now. The onus is then on the search engines to turn off access to the illegal sites and there won't be any ambiguity about licences as there won't be any given. Music will only be available from the official channels ending with the label's web URL.