Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/03/24/emi_shuts_digital_unit/
EMI rejigs digital unit, waves goodbye to ex-Google CIO
Douglas Merrill in and out in under a year
Posted in Legal, 24th March 2009 12:16 GMT
EMI Music split with its digital head yesterday after the troubled record company decided to move the unit he oversaw into its main business operations.
Ex-Google CIO Douglas Merrill joined the firm less than a year ago. Terra Firma boss Guy Hands, whose private equity company bought the record label for close to $3.5bn in May 2007, hired Merrill as EMI’s digital strategy boss last April.
EMI has promoted Cory Ondrejka to a newly-created role of exec veep of digital marketing. He had been Merrill’s number two under the firm’s digital unit.
Ondrejka, who co-founded Second Life, joined EMI as senior vice president of digital strategy in June 2008.
The company said that while digital music sales now pulled in more than a fifth of all its revenues, it no longer seemed necessary to run a separate digital unit.
Instead it will be folded into EMI’s main biz ops in a move that some might see as the latest kneejerk reaction by the firm’s management to cut costs.
Meanwhile, Hands – whose investment has shrunk by half over the past year – stood down from running day-to-day operations at EMI in February.
A full copy of an internal memo sent round to employees yesterday detailing EMI's latest business rejig is available over at All Things Digital. ®