March 11, 2010

By By Glenn Peoples, L.A.

-- The day after EMI?s announcement that Elio Leoni-Sceti is being replaced by Charles Allen as chief executive, The Financial Times ponders the importance of music executives who ?get? artists. The last couple heads of EMI were music outsiders. Allen, as Billboard reported yesterday, has a good reputation for meshing with the creative side of the industry. But one anonymous analyst thinks Allen?s lack of industry experience puts EMI at a disadvantage. ?Look at Universal, much more successful over recent years than EMI. When Lucian Grainge?got a lifetime achievement award a couple of years back, there was this cringingly long and sometimes embarrassingly intimate video of [Universal] acts paying tribute to him, but the point was they had all known him since they were kids and they all loved him. Can you see anyone doing that for Charles? Not for another 20 years at least and EMI doesn't have 20 years. It might not have 20 months.? (Financial Times)

-- News Corp. may be mulling a sale of mobile content provider Jamba, according to a report by Mergermarket. A sale of Jamba, which was brought on to capitalize on leverage Fox properties like ?Family Guy? and ?The Simpsons,? would allow News Corp. to focus on building up MySpace to better compete with Facebook. The lost storyline in all this: another attempt at vertical integration bites the dust. (Financial Times)

-- Will Microsoft phase out Zune as a standalone music player? Digital Noise?s Matt Rosoff notes that Microsoft is encouraging its game developers to migrate their games to the Windows Mobile 7 platform. Even so, a member of the Zune team tells Rosoff they are ?all systems go? on Zune HD production and plans a firmware update this spring. (Digital Noise)

-- Sonos, a maker of multi-room digital music systems, has reportedly taken a new round of investment from London-based Index Ventures. Former Cisco exec Mike Volpi will take a seat on the board of directors. (TechCrunch)

-- Autumn Tone Records has signed a deal with Red Eye Distribution. The label is a spinoff of the popular music blog Aquarium Drunkard.

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