Thread: Warner To Buy EMI

Posts: 9

Post by azure October 28, 2011 (1 of 9)
I wonder if EMI Classics will go the same way as Teldec and Erato..
Warner are known for pop/ rock titles, not classical nor jazz.
Also what will happen to the Blue Note titles?

"Len Blavatnik poised to pay $1.5bn for the last major British record label, home to the Beatles and Coldplay."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/28/emi-sold-russian-billionaire?newsfeed=true

Post by rammiepie October 28, 2011 (2 of 9)
As the article went on to say, globalization is the key word and with everything being digitized today I'm sure there will be no dearth of product when downloading and not physical discs become the norm.

I'm sure licensing the music by smaller companies to turn into SACDs will also be an option and whether it was sold to Universal or SONY/BMG would not have made any difference......

The whole music industry is in disarray, anyway!

When is the last time SONY has released an SACD?

Post by soundboy October 28, 2011 (3 of 9)
rammiepie said:

When is the last time SONY has released an SACD?

A couple of days ago...."T Square Plays The Square" was released on 10/26 in Japan.

http://www.sonymusicshop.jp/m/item/itemShw.php?site=S&ima=4205&cd=VRCL000010104

Japan Sony has been releasing SACDs on a regular basis and has 7 titles announced for the rest of 2011.

Post by Jonalogic October 29, 2011 (4 of 9)
Sic transit gloria mundi...

And Warner - oh dear.

I wish I had Rammepie's implicit faith in globalisation and capitalism to at least honour EMIs irreplaceable analogue heritage.

But I don't.

I'd love to be proved wrong, though.

Post by Chris October 29, 2011 (5 of 9)
azure said:

I wonder if EMI Classics will go the same way as Teldec and Erato..
Warner are known for pop/ rock titles, not classical nor jazz.
Also what will happen to the Blue Note titles?

"Len Blavatnik poised to pay $1.5bn for the last major British record label, home to the Beatles and Coldplay."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/28/emi-sold-russian-billionaire?newsfeed=true

The way I interpret it from the article in The Guardian, Warner just happens to be another label recently bought up by mr Blavatnik.
Strange that EMI Japan is about to release so many SACDs from the analouge age next year?
Are they independent of EMI Britain?
If so, it seems highly likely that their SACDs will be mastered from second generation masters,not the orginal masters.
While I think it equally highly unlikely that mr Blavanik will release any classical SACDs hopefully we will see the same trend from his EMI as DECCA has just started doing,namely releasing titles from their back catalogue as 24/96 downloads.
Browsing the German HI RES Downloadsite Highresaudio yesterday I found among a handful of titles tempting stuff like Solti's Mahler 8.
The titles had the same cover as when they where pushed on unsuspecting costumers as 24/96 remastered but released on rbcd!
This time over they are offered as 24/96 SUPER DIGITAL transfers.
New marketing strategy for old material yes. But this time around maybe they are actually offering the orginal masters remastered to 24/96 pcm by DECCA themselves.
What SUPER DIGITAL stands for more than big HYPE, beats me .But unless Pentatone buys some analogue masters and transfers them straight to DSD like their Philips re-issues, I think that this is probably as good as it will get regarding a lot of the old analogue recorded back catalogue from most labels.

Post by Polarius T October 29, 2011 (6 of 9)
Chris said:

EMI Japan.... Are they independent of EMI Britain?

If so, it seems highly likely that their SACDs will be mastered from second generation masters, not the orginal masters.

They (EMI Music Japan) have been part of EMI Group Ltd. since 2007 when Toshiba sold off its stake in what until then was Toshiba-EMI. So I'd say chances are that the new EMI Japan SACDs, too, might be derived directly from the original masters (or session tapes, as was the case with some of the Furtwänglers).

But you never know, and I'm not sure how Gibson & co. at Abbey Road might be able to mangage this big a project in such a short time.

Post by chenzl November 3, 2011 (7 of 9)
azure said:

....I wonder if EMI Classics will go the same way as Teldec and Erato..
Warner are known for pop/ rock titles, not classical nor jazz.....

I think EMI will suffer the same fate if Warner takes over, it would probably becomes a reissue & repacked budget box-set label kind of things. Sad.

Post by seth November 3, 2011 (8 of 9)
chenzl said:

I think EMI will suffer the same fate if Warner takes over, it would probably becomes a reissue & repacked budget box-set label kind of things. Sad.

That's basically what EMI has become. It seems like half of their classical output is Rattle/BPO. Meanwhile, they keep repackaging the same recordings from the 1960s and 1970s over and over again, and have licensed many out to Brilliant Classics.

Post by rammiepie November 3, 2011 (9 of 9)
seth said:

That's basically what EMI has become. It seems like half of their classical output is Rattle/BPO. Meanwhile, they keep repackaging the same recordings from the 1960s and 1970s over and over again, and have licensed many out to Brilliant Classics.

Brilliant Classics used to release SACDs.........are they still manufacturing them, at present?

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