5 Albums in 9 Years = VP at EMI

New EMI VP to bank on the awesome power of Rush to revitalize the music industry in the 21st century

Once upon a time the people who ran record labels were quite simply music freaks. They were producers like Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic, tastemakers like Tony Wilson at Factory, or musicians like Ian McKaye at Dischord.

The list of things that have gone wrong with the music industry is a mile long, and it didn't start or end with downloading.

But just take a look at this blog post from Cory Ondrejka, co-creator of Second Life, who has been hired as EMI's senior vice-president of digital strategy. (This is an actual screen grab of his blog which is at http://ondrejka.blogspot.com)

Where the hell do we start with what's wrong here....

Let's start here:

The new VP of digital strategy bought 5 albums in the past 9 years.

Three of those were by Rush. It does get worse.

When he talks about "the" Jane's Addiction live album? You can bet he doesn't mean this one...

...the band's amazing 1987 debut album on XXX Records recorded live at the Roxy.

He means this one...

...A money-grabbing contract-filler.

Five albums since 2000.

Three of those were by Rush.

Rush.

And this is the guy who will bring EMI into the digital age.

OK, you're saying, he's not a music guy, but he knows his computers right? That's what's important!

Yeah, well, let's read on in his blog to this bit:

Even when I knew I wanted something – Accelerate – I had the problem that I was traveling with my MacBook Air, so buying a CD was useless. I had never setup the iTMS on that computer and you would be amazed at how hard Apple has made that process.

I'm pretty sure iTMS must mean iTunes, which is so simple my 81 year old father does a pretty good job with it. One would think the creator of Second Life might be able to muddle on through.

I hope when he's at EMI his friends continue to keep him updated on the release schedule of Rush.

And oh yeah: R. Kelly's innocent. And by innocent, I mean not going to jail.