‘Tis the season for heartwarming adverts, packed high streets and attempts to break the usual online retail figures. Although the season is based around religious holiday, the notorious commercial factors surrounding Christmas will be keeping the economists busy, thumbing through sales reports and picking up the trends. But 2011 is  a year with much focus on the digital streaming services and new online music stores through Amazon and Google; what will the season bring for the music industry?

There were three articles in Music Week which got my attention this week and all service this discussion. The first very brief announcement covered Spotify’s growing body of paid subscribers, which has reached 2.5 million and still growing. Due to a US launch and its integration with Facebook, it seems things are looking good for Spotify to cut a profit at the end of the financial year. Although the company may rejoice, the success will only cause the many quibbling artists to continue harking about royalties and the devaluation of their product. If Spotify has so many subscribers, why are so many artists still not seeing returns from these services? Craig Hamilton was good enough to point out to me last week, “Some are on points deals (similar to physical deals) and are only getting 10% of digital revenue. Bear in mind that a label could be giving 20% to an aggregator, so artists could be getting 8% (or the label could even be passing on the aggregation costs to the artist!).

The other article discussed ST Holdings removing their catalogue from streaming services after seeing a poor return, including a dip in online sales (which may or may not be blamed on the growth of online streaming). They have now announced that they are working with streaming companies to determine what, if any, better deals could be made available to musicians whilst keeping the consumer happy. Another debate formed around “streams vs sales”; Beggars Group Chairman Martin Mills came out defending Spotify, equating 200 plays to a sale - although admitting that you need to be as popular as Adele to see those numbers. I do worry that there is a sort of nepotism at work between the major labels and the streaming companies, as it seems to be the smaller artists complaining and being squeezed on the deals. The fallout means 200 indie labels are off these services, making Spotify retort to the cue card: If you are getting something from pirates and those who are not your traditional fanbase, it’s better than nothing.

The third announcement addressed Amazon’s Black Friday deals on their music store. As with Amazon’s Cloud Drive and their commitment to pushing the buttons of many of the record labels, they are giving away free music to drive more customers to their service. The likes of Laura Marling, Katy Perry and The Rolling Stones will become the unwitting loss leaders; traditionally a supermarket tactic to sell goods at cost or below to stimulate greater sales in other goods. Going back to what I discussed last week, could digital music be reduced to free media to drive consumption of more physical objects, such as live concerts or merchandising? 

The battle of the gift cards...

So as Crimbo quickly approaches and we complete endless shopping lists, there will of course be the awkward gift card moment - when just nothing else will do! iTunes has always done pretty well in this market, with many choosing to buy a voucher for their iPod-obsessed teen or app-crazy spouse. Spotify will now have their green pieces of plastic gold on retailers’ shelves soon, and Amazon’s already strong online presence will have a new outlet to push. Even Facebook are getting in on the act in the US. X-Factor will make its traditional (yet not always successful) singles chart bid, and the Christmas pop compilations have already started flooding TV advertising and retail shelf space alike, almost as premature as eating a mince pie in November. 

This week we have been assigned several readings from Will Page, including “PRS Report: State of the Music Industry” (2008, 2009 and 2010), “Moving Digital Britain Forward Without Leaving Creative Britain Behind”, “The Long Tail of P2P” and “Spotify - the Stats”. We will also look at David Hesmondhalgh’s “The British Dance Music Industry: A Case Study of Independent Cultural Production”.

When I began working as a freelancer, I kept hearing a common phrase - “Work for free or at full price; NEVER work cheap”. A cheap rate can undermine your working process by eliciting the expectation of a lower quality. Working for free manages expectations and gives you more power and control; working for full price allows clear processes to be defined and quality and turnover to be discussed freely. Yet imagine a musician as a freelancer, independent of major label contracts; it seems that musicians are being forced to work more and more cheaply while still meeting the demands of the paying consumer.

In my last blog post, I discussed the Open Source community and how it works together for the good of a project rather than its financial success. The model allows developers greater collaboration, producing tools for productivity’s sake, although not completely altruistically. Developers create these projects to enhance or even launch their careers, and many go on to (or are already in) full-time employment with software engineering companies, building for commercial ventures. Their “side projects” tend to lead to other ventures from which an income may be made. Whilst writing about this process, I could not help but compare it to the works created by music artists - and how such products were not necessarily made available just to create a revenue stream, but also to enhance or create other opportunities. So is the recorded medium being sacrificed willingly to improve statistics in other sectors? And with many sectors of digital music on the rise, why are artists getting such a poor deal from new retail services?

The economics of the music industry have changed significantly in the last decade. The live industry and publishing sectors have seen growth, recorded sales have declined (although they did flatten out in 2010) and emerging business models have given rise to new revenue streams through ad-supported campaigns. Synchronisation and merchandising deals have served to bolster the recording sector, with the greater use of 360 deals (Page [2010], p.7). Many attribute these changes to the convergence of technology, new music distribution models (such as streaming and online retail) and increased media consumption. According to Page, the industry is not all “doom and gloom” as many commentators state. Digital revenue was up in all three PRS reports (see above);51% year-on-year growth in 2008 represented a boom that continued through 2009 though cooled off slightly in 2010. iTunes is hugely successful and further online retailers such as HMV and even supermarket Tesco have been helping to sector growth. Spotify’s streaming service has seen a significant rise in popularity, citing 2.2m users in 2009, quickly gaining 1m users on launch in the USA in August 2011 and rising to an estimated 3.25m following a deal with Facebook in September 2011. 

Yet this week, John Hopkins demonstrated his strong dislike for Spotify. The streaming service is notorious for poor royalty output in relation to other means of distribution and the number of times the music is accessed: “Got paid £8 for 90,000 plays. Fuck Spotify.”  His sentiments were shared by fellow Twitter users, and soon the debate erupted on Music Week’s comment section. The major labels have been happy to strike deals with streaming services, but the royalty output for artists has been considerably lower than that based on the sale of physical formats. Spotify’s defence focuses on access rather than ‘per stream’ revenue, reminding us they are the second largest digital streaming service in regards to revenue and payout (over $100m) and that at least the artist is getting something, rather than the nothing that online piracy generates. It also has to be mentioned that users do not usually turn to services like Spotify to listen to independents, and it tends to be the indie artists and those without representation who are complaining the most. Hesmondhalgh notes that independents often avoid compilations and the mainstream; Spotify and such services similarly can’t meet the needs of the indie artist as any monetary success is based on popularity and favours the ‘star system’. Physical formats rather than digital sales have remained popular for the indie consumer due to the souvenir nature of the product; these artists often produce more interesting physical products, from limited edition vinyl to letterpress prints. 

Although piracy has been blamed for the overall decline in sales, the industry is also at fault for not adapting to technological change quickly enough and languishing in a submissive ‘something is better than nothing’ mentality. Now that digital distribution is becoming the norm, labels are being held at ransom over participation in online sales and streaming services. A perfect example of this was Apple’s treatment of Coldplay, promising the iTunes launch of the album at one price but cutting the price on release (Knopper, 2009). When the label complained, iTunes replied that the price was set and they could remove it from the store if requested. The album remained, and it became clear who holds the power in online retail. This seems to have created a knock-on effect, and the percentage the artists sees is dwindling. Labels must maintain a good relationship with their new online distributor, so it seems they are willing to work within these pricing models, however reluctantly. Yet the services do drive consumption, which aids the live sector and merchandise - the parts of the industry which can be made tangible and bespoke. So do the majors see digital streaming as a cheap sell off to drive other consumption, pushing products like live events? Is this a devaluation that leads to small term gains? Is this false economy? 

2012 is also poised to be the year of the new online music service - more and more are trying to exploit the digitisation of music sales and distribution. Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Music and Boinc will all look to capture a share of their respective markets. Amazon and Google have a strong user base to work from, while News Corp-backed Boinc will be entering as a relative newbie. But although moving away from the physical formats will lower cost in manufacturing and distribution for the label, the shift to digital formats has seen artists getting a poor deal on digital sales - and an even poorer one on streaming. 

This week I have been charged with three readings: James Boyle’s The Public Domain (Ch. 8), Chris Anderson’s Wired article on ‘The Long Tail’ and Matt Mason’s The Pirate Dilemma (Ch. 5 & 6). The key points I took from these readings were their ideas about the online community, their behaviour and why although the notion of developing, releasing, sharing and copying comes with some negative connotations, there are those who believe in working for a cause rather than for a price.

For many years I have been a huge fan of open source. When I was 18 and built my first home computer, it was run on Linux Ubuntu - the open source operating system. When I couldn’t afford Adobe’s expensive Photoshop software, I turned to GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program. While living in Ireland and working on a Brian Adams concert, I was introduced to the open source audio editing suite Audacity by a colleague who was helping with the advertisements. I’ve used Thuderbird for my email, Firefox for my Browsing, VLC as my media player... the list goes on. The fact is that open source is all around us, helping with our work processes and our media creation and consumption and essentially doing it for FREE. A Union report in 2007 (Mason p.151) claimed over £525m in voluntary work contributions are made every year by the Open Source community. 

The Open Source community is built on a simple set of functions and understandings: create, share with the community to help develop and improve, release the finished version online for download and also publish the code of the final product. But Open Source is not limited to just software. For instance, some people consider meal recipes as open source; they have been posted, amended and redistributed online in much the same way as a traditional Open Source project has. The idea is based on collaboration and development for the sake of the project itself, not an end goal of large profits and global fame. Much like Boyle (p.189) goes on the describe, the sense of creating in a community drives people to work on the projects on their own free time. But with a large social network and many people focusing on the same goals, the burden is shared. 

Not all projects are harmless fun or for general productivity, however. In 2010 a virus was called Stuxnet was discovered in the system controlling the centrifuges to Iran’s nuclear reactors. The worm was intended to shut down the cooling mechanisms of uranium enrichment facilities whilst telling its operators nothing was wrong. So why is this important? Stuxnet is an Open Source virus; the code is out there to download, amend and redeploy. Although the traditional Open Source community is not being blamed for the development of such a weaponised piece of code, it could certainly be a part of the next if such releases and programming become popular amongst the community. As of this week, a new trojan virus linked to Stuxnet named Duqu was apparently detected in a second attack. 

Similar to the Open Source community are those who contribute to a less restrictive copyright mechanism known as Creative Commons. Rather than a single project surrounded by contributors, Creative Commons allows the release of works which would be traditionally copyrighted (music, images, books, videos etc.) and lets them be posted for others to include in their own work without cost - with appropriate credits. It is a more passive collaboration - rather than the ideas of many coming together to create something, a sole creator is offered a library of resources to build from. Creative Commons is actually a non-profit organisation headed by Harvard Law professor and copyright commentator Lawrence Lessig. It is a licence process that Lessig has “made out of private and exclusive rights” (p.184) alongside the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Boyles describes it as an alternative to traditional copyright, replacing “all rights reserved” for “some rights reserved” (p.182). Yet although it sounds like a more open copyright process, it only streamlines copyright approval features that already exist - the traditional copyright does allow for works to be used with the correct permissions granted. The saying may be “all rights reserved”, but that does not rule out the possibility for traditional copyright holders to grant some freedom of use. 

So what does Creative Commons give us as media producers? Much like our discussions around Open Source and the public domain, Creative Commons becomes a tool of the community. Rather than a replacement for traditional copyright, it is an amendment to make available some creative actions (copying, editing, posting) as long as certain rules are met. Copyright comes with lots of negative connotations, often through misunderstanding of its processes or the inherent legal implications of misusing it. The concept of Creative Commons developed to circumvent certain out-of-date copyright laws, allowing those who use relatively new technologies such as the internet an easier way of maintaining rights while granting creative freedom. Commons is an attempt to make some works more accessible to the creative industries, letting them manipulate and produce in a “remix culture” manner. 

I have focused much of this post on the creative communities and their open platforms - Commons and Open Source. In the readings from Anderson and Mason we also look at changes to online distribution and the online consumer. Anderson gives us insight into the model of distribution and how digitisation and online enterprise are changing it. Storage is cheap, and computer and internet speeds continue to increase; according to Moore’s Law, they will only continue to grow. This has allowed us to create vast online sales catalogues of media goods, eliminating the restrictions created when items formerly went “out of print”. 

The Long Tail economic theory has always been fascinating. Although we often discuss how success for an artist in the industry is to have one release that sells lots rather than lots of releases that sell some, we see that distributors who take advantage of online enterprise and increased technological performance (in speed or storage) have managed to create an income stream from the large percentage of releases that sell only some. The theory has its critics notably from Will Page of MCPS-PRS, who queries whether the Long Tail truly exists on services like iTunes. Anderson has defended his data and postures that although data from mobile music providers may not follow the trend explicitly, the theory does play out in the marketplace. Massive demand, a wide selection and high media consumption all make it possible. Self distribution and marketing are also contributors; along with social media sites and streamlined access to music aggregators, they allow easier access to independent and unsigned artists. 

Community was once defined by those around you; a group interacted locally for particular goals. With ever-increasing interconnectivity, we have all become members of a different type of community - the online community. Although Open Source communities were around before the internet came to fruition, online features have enabled a far greater range of collaboration than notable pre-internet groups such as the Homebrew Computer Club. Creative Commons has allowed those who wish to distribute their works a simple and streamlined process; rights holders can grant others an alternative licence to the restrictions imposed by traditional copyright law. Our ability to consume as individuals within online social platforms means that niche markets have become as important to distributors as the big hit makers; it is commercially important that those niches represent discussion, sharing and purchasing - enabling the Long Tail. But there can only be so much consumption; so with a rapid rise in material available to discover, what will be the knock on effect, if any, to the “hits”? Will the Long Tail ever simply become an equilibrium? And could it be possible that our new sense of community and development for mostly the greater good will spawn a wider ‘free culture’ movement, circumnavigating major labels and producing merely for the sake of consumption? 

A historic £1.2b buyout finally took place last week when Universal Music Group (who had seemingly backed out of talks) placed a final winning bid for the British music institution EMI and its recording division. But with regulatory bodies and the likes of IMPALA waiting to scrutinise the deal and its knock-on effects, is the deal well and truly done?

Anybody who has been following my posts over the past month has seen the deals go back and forth with ongoing speculation and “will they, won’t they” drama. The deal effectively moves EMI’s catalogue and assets such as Abbey Road into the ownership of Universal and French parent company Vivendi. But like all major corporate takeovers, there are still some hurdles to jump. IMPALA (the Independent Music Companies Association) had already spoken out over a large buyout and warned it would oppose any other major label’s attempts to acquire EMI. 

In a Music Week article last week, Charlotte Otter described IMPALA’s concerns and the reasons behind their strong opposition to the deal. IMPALA fear that the combination of EMI and a group such as Universal under the Vivendi flag would give an unfair market share to one label and widen the competitive gap between major labels and independents. Another side effect of the buyout could be the streamlining of departments under the Universal label, meaning potential job losses and possibly closures of some of EMI’s smaller sub-labels. IMPALA have voiced concerns about major label practices in the past, and as the article states, IMPALA have already been looking into Universal’s dealings with Live Nation, the large live events oligarch. 

IMPALA will be turning to the competition authorities to voice these concerns, but Universal stresses that the deal is not simply a move to gain power, but an effort to rescue a brand that it sees as vital to the industry itself and “breathe new life into it.” The Financial Times notes Vivendi CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy’s reminder of the Bertelsmann buyout in 2006 and his claim that this transaction would only help to create a resurgence of the great British icon. Universal CEO Lucian Grange added “We’re not bankers; we’re not private equity. Music runs through our veins” - addressing concerns surrounding EMI during its ownership by Guy Hands and his private equity firm Terra Nova. Many artists felt the corporate style of management and funding brought in under Hands’s reign led to a stifling of creativity. These issues caused artists like the Rolling Stones and Sir Paul McCartney to walk away from the label. 

These concerns are valid, and some have raised other pressing issues. James Ashton of the Evening Standard sees the greater threat to the UK’s creativity as a nation without a major music label. EMI’s talent for finding new artists and making them stars has launched many successful British acts. Now the power will lie elsewhere, with dictation coming from HQs in the USA. Again, a valid concern, but the UK has produced lots of talent without EMI. And will EMI’s directive of finding and nurturing such artists be diminished, or will its new owners demand it as part of the package they have purchased? 

One asset which the deal does not seem to threaten is Abbey Road Studios. Celebrating its 80th anniversary during the weekend of the buyout, Universal was clear to state their intentions for Abbey Road. In an article for The Independent, Grange stated:

"Abbey Road Studios are a symbol of EMI, a symbol of British culture, a symbol for the creative community. This is a historic acquisition and an important step in preserving the legacy of EMI Music. As an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with. Its artists and their music provided the soundtrack to my teenage years."

We must also remember that Universal did not buy up EMI in its entirety. Only the recording division of EMI has gone to Universal, with the bid for the publishing side going to joint-led Sony-ATV Publishing. If regulators are happy with the move, Sony will become the largest publishing company in the sector - something IMPALA is also concerned about. The EMI catalogue is very valuable, and this seismic shift may be what the competition authorities are particularly worried about, both in the USA and EU. IMPALA’s American equivalent A2IM (the American Association of Independant Musicians) and their president Rich Bengloff stood alongside their European counterpart, stating: 

“The increased concentration of copyright ownership, historically, has always hurt the independent label community in terms of achieving economic parity and market access. We join our European Impala Independent music label colleagues in their concern over this acquisition and await more detail."

All that we know for sure is that where there were four, there are now three - the major labels and their ongoing battles for market share have entered a new phase and competitiveness between them will now be higher than ever. How Europe and its competition authorities will favour this new structure is yet to be seen, and the importance of the objections IMPALA and many similar voice may raise is not yet known. There may yet be some twists in the road ahead for the Sony-Universal-EMI love triangle...

This week’s readings are from Mark Deuze (Media Work) and Keith Negus (Music Genres and Corporate Cultures) on the interconnections between the workplace and our personal lives and how the cycle of production and consumption is converging on so many aspects of our everyday lives. They also discussed the implications of corporate intervention in the media industries.

Many of us take everyday media for granted. The digital revolution has made access to media such as music, games and films easy, and the rise of home computing and the internet has offered us a streamlined connection to it. This has brought big business into play and has created a much tighter corporate structure around the creative industries. How does an industry historically based on creativity, fickle consumer trends and risk taking suddenly become constrained by formulated corporate analysis and predictions?

To discuss this, we have to look first at the way we consumed then and the way we consume now. Before the late 1990s, consumption of media was generally in two forms: a physical medium (a CD, a newspaper, a video tape) or a broadcast (TV, radio, cinema). Our means of distributing media, be it creative or news journalism, were restricted by the technology at hand. With the popularity of the gramophone and home playback devices during the 1920s, a means of media production, sales and consumption was born. This industrial process was encouraged not solely by those involved in the music industry, but also by those involved in consumer electronics. EMI (Electric and Music Industries) was initially rival companies Columbia Gramophone and The Gramophone company. Sony is famous for its electronic products today, but its conception was via the Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo company, famous for its work developing transistor radios. Sony (alongside Phillips) were also industries leaders in format creation, creating the CD, MiniDisc, DVD and Blueray.  

For these companies, controlling the production (music, film, games, etc.) as well as the means of its consumption (technology) was a no-brainer. Essentially, the large firms became responsible for the output of much of the commercial media, releasing it on formats requiring the purchasing of hardware goods. Their earnings from the music industry itself were minor in comparison to their other business ventures, but as technology improved, consumption increased and so did the need for production. Personal playback devices became the norm with the introduction of the Sony Walkman; cars began to have stereos built in as standard and eventually the consumption of media began to invade many more aspects of our personal lives. 

With the introduction of the CD in the early 1980s, the physical format shifted from the analogue domain to the digital. The move was significant and eventually lead to increased issues with piracy due to the ease in which they could be duplicated and later ripped and shared using the new household commodity of the home computer and the introduction of the internet. New means of digital distribution began to emerge and online enterprise drove innovation. This gave greater power to the consumer and meant distribution was not only driven by marketing through advertisement and airplay, but by virtual “word of mouth”. Huge digital libraries began to grow, some by legal means such as iTunes, some by illegal, such as Napster. Organising large personal collections became simpler, and they could even be carried around in your pocket with mp3 players such as Apple’s iPod. Like Deuze (p.15) describes, technology began to aid organisation and allowed people to consume all the time (p.30). People were given new ways to gather and consume, as well as share and discuss, outside the traditional controls on the mainstream media. 

Although much power was given to the consumer in regards to choice, the personal computer became the proverbial “Trojan Horse” (Deuze p.37) for other services to invade the home and become new tools in distribution. YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Twitter, Facebook - all these services give us ways to consume as we have discussed, but they now give the public their own ways to distribute and socialise. These businesses tap into a seemingly un-endless stream of creativity, made up of millions of contributors. Giving the public the ability to upload their talent has enabled them to become part of the industrial process of creation rather than just being for consumption. This is effectively free labour for media sites which encourage people to put their creative works online. 

The convergence of technology to amend this cycle of creation and consumption has also lead to new means of networking around particular media. Content has birthed many online communities (Deuze p.76). World of Warcraft is an example of a MMORPG creating not only a devout following but an interacting community that generates ongoing revenue through subscriptions and in-game purchasing. Facebook and Myspace were driven by sharing personal information, media such as music and video and linking to articles and news stories which may be interesting to those in their social circle. This networked socialising has also allowed for greater data analysis of web statistics, also known as web analytics. This data has become a valued commodity and is a main stream of income for companies such as Facebook. The data we share and the media we watch becomes a statistic, which in turn drives decision making for those companies who purchase that information or focus on a demographic of interest. 

This form of statistical analysis comes to suit the more historically recent corporate structure of the industry. Trends can be analysed and so can their consumption. Although sitels like Google Analytics can give out basic information on visitors, sites like Next Big Sound give comparative data to other artists and also work off social media network trends.  Labels can assess risks with data relating to demographic, locations where the artist may be popular (through popular view counts and sharing in that country) and by what medium their fanbase use to listen to the works (streaming, downloads, CD purchasing, etc.). These statistics can also aid in the management of production and consumption as Negus (p.47) discusses. Although the use of tools like Nielsen Soundscan are still important for monitoring distribution and sales figures, analytics are able to define popular trends and therefore aid in market predictability and can be important deciding factor on how much development and budget are available to a rising artist. 

Consumption is at its highest, and media can be created, marketed and distribution at low or no cost by anybody with the correct tools at home. Yet the keys to mainstream media outlets (including new internet marketing tactics such as AdWords and targeted advertising) and grand advertising budgets are still held by those who can afford it. For the artists, becoming popular online through self marketing and distribution is just as difficult as being discovered and signed in the traditional sense - though live music performances and demo tapes. For the labels, statistics like web analytics and Soundscan provide some comfort and aid in their predictability, but can also be seen as a way to avoid risks and potentially miss something or someone that could have made a significant impact through their talent alone, not just the amount of views they have on YouTube. 

I’ll leave with with a little video from Frank Zappa and his thoughts on how the music industry was changing and what his concerns were... (he goes in a weird tangent after 2 mins, but a fun watch). 

This week’s Music Week article reminded me of the ongoing problems over at EMI. The storied buy-out has been dragged out since Citigroup took control of the label from Terra Firma in February of this year. The latest reports claim that Warner Music owner Len Blavatnik has walked away from the bidding after a $1.5 billion offer was rejected by Citigroup. Bidding remains ongoing, and in an effort to recoup their £2.2 billion loss, Citigroup are willing to split the business for multiple buy-outs. So what will be left of the label when the feasting frenzy is over?

Let’s clarify who allegedly wants what: Warner Music is interested mainly in EMI’s extensive and historic music catalogue. KKR and Bertlesmann-owned BMG Rights Management is going after the publishing wing. Sony has asked for more time to whip up interest amongst its investors and is currently rumoured to be bidding on the publishing side only. Universal walked away last week after becoming the front runner in the negotiations but then apparently losing out in bidding to Blavatnik.

EMI CEO Roger Faxon was desperate not to split EMI and believes keeping it together will enable its overall value to grow. He has been rumoured to be integrating strategies between the divisions to make the split more difficult. But with no buyer willing to take on EMI as a single entity, the split looks likely. If a Warner bid is to be revived, it is likely EMI will cease to be a brand in the US market. If Sony acquires the publishing side, it will likely merge it with its own extensive works and those newly acquired from the Michael Jackson estate. 

It is also unclear where the likes of Abbey Road would lie if a split were to occur. Almost a year ago, the famous studios were under threat, with rumours of closure and sell offs. After a campaign by music fans and celebrities to safeguard the British institution, EMI held onto the site and considered touting the studio to third-party investors. Now, while its parent company dissolves, the first purpose built recording studio may find itself the unwanted furniture in the publishing v. catalogue divorce proceedings. But to many, Abbey Road is as historic and important as the 114-year-old label itself. From the technological discoveries of Alan Blumlein in the 1930s to The Beatles and Pink Floyd recordings in the 1960s, the building has a rich and important history of British innovation and creativity – one which should not be simply cast aside.

The bidding wars and rumour mills will continue while the staff and talent at EMI wait nervously for the final outcome. The Rolling Stones, Queen, Sir Paul McCartney and more recently Robbie Williams have left the label, the latter citing the ongoing turbulence as a factor in his departure. It’s difficult to see an ending that will be happy for all, especially for the likes of Terra Firma and Guy Hands who are still reeling from losing control. EMI, a brand and a symbol of the British music industry, may be torn apart and condemned to history.