What Could A Google Exec Do If He Ran A Major Record Label?
In a bit of a surprise move, Douglas Merrill, a VP of engineering (one of a few) at Google (and sometimes referred to as the company’s CIO) is jumping ship to become “president of digital” at major record label EMI. Amusingly, this comes just a month and a half after he declared in an interview that he had “the best CIO job in the world.” No matter what, this should be interesting. EMI has been charting a different course than the other major record labels since a private equity firm bought it out last year. Rather than whine and fret, the company seems to be looking at the changing marketplace (finally!) as an opportunity. The company has also cut back from the IFPI/RIAA campaign of lawsuits, though it hasn’t gone away from them completely. Still, a Google exec, hopefully with at least some of Google’s DNA of treating users right can only lead to good things. As we’ve said, there’s still a huge role for record labels to play in the new digital world, if they just stopped looking at th
