EMI manages to compete with free after all

November 23rd, 2009

As digital downloads have disaggregated the album and restored the single to prominence, “unit sales” at the Big Four major labels have increased even as revenues have dropped. But new data out from EMI shows that labels can do more than just resign themselves to hugely decreased revenues as they sell bazillions of teen-pop singles on iTunes; it is possible to increase total revenues, even in recorded music.

EMI has been in trouble for years. The smallest of the majors, it was acquired by private equity firm Terra Firma in 2007 and has since bled hundreds of millions of pounds in net losses. Revenues have declined steadily for years.

But EMI has just released some results from fiscal year 2009 showing that revenue is up 7.4 percent over 2008—and that’s without “graduated response” coming into effect (except in South Korea), ISP filtering, or the anti-infringement measures. Might it be possible to compete with free after all?