The record companies should reinvent themselves as service providers rather than "owners of music", or so says Peter Gabriel. Actually, behind all the firings and Lemsip style appointments, I think that's the sort of thing EMI chief Guy Hands has been saying. Which is interesting.
The former Genesis man and more recent digital music entrepreneur (he set up one of the early business-to-business digital music providers OD2 and more recently launched the public facing We7), has been talking to the BBC about the ever changing music business, the impact of the net on artists, and the role of the record company in the digital age.
He told them: "I love all these experiments - there's a lot of ways for musicians to communicate and sell their records to their fans. There's still room for record companies but they should reinvent themselves as a service industry and not as owners". Labels needed to be more flexible, he added, so that artists can take advantage of the full potential of digital distribution. He continued: "The structure of the old album and waiting for that to be finished still has some merit but you can do a lot of other things and I think it should be a lot looser and mixed up".