If you were in any doubt whatsoever that Coldplay are on the wrong side of cool, then look no further. Their record company has just launched what they describe as “a new dawn in Coldplay news reporting” the uniquely-monikered, ‘Coldplay Messenger’. The e mail newsletter gets going gently, like a copy of Christian Music Weekly [...]

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When venture capitalist Guy Hands bought EMI ten months ago for $6.4 billion, Rupert Murdoch scoffed “MySpace is going to be the future of music, not record labels.” “I said I was going to prove him wrong,” Mr. Hands told the New York Times. But has he? 2000 of the company’s 5,500 employees are soon [...]

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Guy Hands is the highest new entry in this year’s list of Britain’s top 50 music millionaires, part of the Sunday Times Rich List 2008. Last year he wasn’t involved in the music industry, but after his company Terra Firma bought EMI for £2.4bn last year, he shoots straight into the 2008 chart at number [...]

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Guy Hands is forcing all new hires, including newies Nick Gatfield and Douglas Merrill, to go through psychometric profiling, including an exam paper and an intelligence test, reports the Telegraph. Musictoob says: Could he be more rock and roll?

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Guy Hands has surprised industry watchers with the appointment of Nick Gatfield as A&R Chief at EMI. Gatfield was previously head of Island records, where he helped to drive Amy Winehouse’s global success. Gatfield has gone in with full guns blazing: “My goal is to nurture that culture of creativity and change, working in true [...]

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Guy Hands has poached a senior executive from Google, Douglas Merrill, to run EMI’s digital strategy. He called the man who led Google’s stock listing in 2004 a ‘proven agent of change’.
This could be Hands’ first sensible move, but what prompted Merrill to go from new to old media? Merrill says:
“I have two passions. One [...]

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Last year Guy Hands suggested that membership of trade body IFPI cost EMI and other labels $250m a year, and insisted that it cut its costs or EMI were out. Now it looks like Hands has won the battle. According to Reuters:
A spokesman for the IFPI, which also looks to safeguard the rights [...]

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