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EMI Group recently revealed its new outlook as a rights management company. The new approach is motivated with the intention of taking advantage of opportunities present in all music markets. The publishing and recording divisions of the company are now integrated and overseen by chief executive Roger Faxon.

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Best known for their viral-smash “Here It Goes Again” (the treadmill video), power-pop band OK Go is proving to be an Internet legend with their latest hit “This Too Shall Pass” off of their latest Album “Of The Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video debuted on March 1st and scored 6.4 YouTube views in its first week. The video features a massive two story Rube Goldberg like device including a human catapult, a hammer smashing a TV and of course dominoes. The band hired Syyn Labs, a California-based engineering firm to build the contraption. It took two days and 60 tries to get a perfect take. State Farm insurance agency signed on to fund the six-figure budget of the video for two plugs to be featured in the clip. After another successful video launch the band has proved that they are really known more for their music videos then they are for their music, but this doesn’t worry them. YouTube popularity has proven beneficial to their ticket sales, as well as directed plenty of concert and festival offers their way, not to mention lots of interest in licensing their songs for sync purposes. In March the band announced, confident that they were doing more than OK, that they would be leaving their label EMI, because they have “failed to view the Internet as part of the music-selling business”. Luckily in the terms of the split the band managed to keep their masters of their latest album, which means more videos to come—they are hoping one for each track. “When you’ve got 13 songs that span a wide range of emotions, it’s easy to find a video idea.” Says singer-guitarist Damian Kulash.

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The partnership between Google and the major music companies signify a shift regarding the outlook on piracy and catalog availability. Record companies hope Vevo will enable them greater control and prove capable in attracting its own audience. Both Vevo and Youtube hope to increase ad revenue by gaining higher CPMs through the deal. Warner Music Groups unwillingness to join Vevo reflects the labels on going reluctance to embrace digital music. WMG continues to promote individual artists instead of its entire catalog. The label has paired with Hulu as a showcase for its select talent.

Universal Music Group remains the pioneer behind digital experimentation. Its leadership in Vevo and its early signing of distribution deals with the free-to-download services reinforcing the fact. UMG’s approach to digital experimentation seems justified compared to the conservative approach of WGM. In three of the past four quarters UMG’s digital revenue as a percentage of its total revenue has been much higher than that of WMG’s.

Acquisitions on the part of Apple and MySpace forecast future availability of streaming and cloud-based services. Apple’s acquisition of Lala indicates future plans to release a music service that makes full use of the iPhone. MySpace continues to gravitate toward a music portal strategy with the purchase of Imeem. MySpace was likely attracted to Imeem not only for its technology but also for its current audience (around 19 million unique monthly users).

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The federal appeals court recently ruled that an antitrust lawsuit, which claims that major labels illegally planned to charge high prices for online music, could proceed. The original lawsuit was filed in 2007 and dismissed in 2008, but it’s now back on course because of alleged facts presented by the plaintiffs that support their claims. The defendants of course include UMG, WMG, EMI and Sony BMG. The lawsuits state that the labels conspired to charge at least 70 cents a song for downloads despite their costs being minute compared to placing music in stores. The appeals court has noted that eMusic charges a mere 25 cents per song and that major labels have refused to do business with the subscription service that is second only to iTunes. The appeals court has also stated that they are on their way to proving alleged price fixing and that the issue is subject to investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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Major label group EMI has struck a deal with Hulu.com to feature concerts and music videos on their ever-popular TV and Movie site. On November 18th the site premiered an artist page on Norah Jones featuring her entire music video catalogue and many performance clips. It is said that exclusive content is yet to come, including full-length concerts and more videos. EMI’s deal with Hulu encompasses artists on the Virgin, Capitol and Blue Note sub-labels. Hulu is proving to a great place to connect to fans and is yet another platform that labels can use to reach out and give fans more of what they are looking for, for free!

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Amidst Apple Corps and EMI’s plans to announce Beatles USB devices this month, both companies were caught off-guard by having to launch a lawsuit against the U.S. Website Bluebeat.com for selling Beatles downloads without permission. Being able to purchase the Beatles music in digital form has been long anticipated so it seems strange that not only did Apple Corps and EMI find an un-authorized online seller, they found that seller to be selling tracks for a mere 25 cents a piece and albums, including recently released remastered albums for $3-4. The website is also streaming the Beatles music for free. Many music and technology bloggers have suspected the use of the Beatles tunes to be unauthorized, and of course they were right. Of course this use was unauthorized, and Bluebeat has made that more than apparent by keeping quiet about the availability of the tracks. From a marketing standpoint, this doesn’t make sense—if the website had been authorized they would probably be promoting and advertising to no end the recent availability of the Beatles music on their site, not to mention their amazingly low prices. Bluebeat’s parent company also has made no mention about it, and anyone with a sense of irony can appreciate the parent company’s name- Media Rights Technology. Meanwhile Apple Corps and EMI are pressing forward with the development of the Apple shaped Beatles USB device which is set to contain tracks from the remastered albums, mini documentary films, original album art, rare photographs and expanded liner notes. Looks like the Beatles will soon be intentionally going digital, the device is set for release during the holiday season.

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Since many music services have switched to MP3 and DRM-free downloads, not much has changed in the market still. Napster recently converted its entire library to unprotected MP3 files and EMI became the first major label to embrace DRM-free music. Still, not enough change has been seen in the overall market. iTunes is still on the top, by a huge margin. The market of downloading is not increasing on a year-to-year basis. Some companies have seen small share increases, but no individual or collective of companies have made any sort of move towards rivaling Apple. Still, this is only been recent changes in events. Maybe in time DRM-free will catch on.

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Now that is has been made known that EMI is going to lay off at least another 1,000 people, employees are going to have to figure out what to do next. The record industry has been changing greatly in the past decade, and while jobs have been lost because of it the number of unemployed are starting to rapidly go up. People who have been in the business and gone through the strong years of the labels together are now being separated and put on a path alone. As scary as that may seem there are people who have gotten through the hard times, and had new doors open that have put them in a position where they don’t look back, but only forward into their new ventures.

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As EMI continues to restructures, it’s becoming clear as to what is going to happen. After cutting almost 2,000 employees, EMI seems to be headed toward a practice that does not include individual labels, but three centralized groups where the goal will be to have fewer employees that work more efficiently in genre or regional specific areas.

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As EMI makes changes under new owner Guy Hands, Indie labels Bella Union and Warp Records have decided to sign with Redeye Distribution instead of continuing with Caroline/EMI. One of the biggest issues that the Indie labels were facing with Caroline was that to renew their contract they would have to agree to use Carolne as their digital distributor which meant giving up their choice to use a third party instead.