According to the Financial Times, EMI bosses were both "confident" and "upbeat" when they revealed financial details of the first half of their current fiscal year. Thanks in particular to strong releases from Coldplay and Gorillaz, the major saw its revenues go up by 5.8% to £924.6 million while pre-tax profits were up 9% to £41 million.
The upbeat mood was no doubt aided by the insights EMI executives have into the second half of the group's current financial year. EMI chief executive Eric Nicoli said his company continued to have a strong release schedule, including the recent new releases from Robbie Williams and Kate Bush, which should enable them to maintain their strong financial position.
EMI Music boss Alain Levy used the financial report to comment on a number of the current issues in the music space. Firstly, he said that British consumers would find CDs retailing at a cheaper price this Christmas, as retailers cut the price of CD albums in a bid to compete with the likes of Amazon who regularly sell new releases for £8.50. On digital music he supported what his counterparts at other majors have also been saying a lot of late - that download platforms would soon have to start adopting variable pricing rather than the iTunes-style one price fits all system.
And finally, on anti-piracy efforts, Levy confirmed EMI would use anti-piracy software on its CD releases next year, despite the controversy surrounding SonyBMG's use of copy protection technology. Needless to say, Levy was keen to stress that EMI's anti-piracy software would be "consumer-friendly", and that it "doesn't have the problems of the copy protection technology which has been used by some of our competitors". Which is good news, because I stopped reviewing EMI releases for a while because the copy-protection software all their promo-copies seemed to come with kept making my computer crash.