Apparently, Amazon Decided On A Long Weekend; Goes Down Again

EMI Hires Another Techie Into Senior Management; Co-Founder Of Second Life Joins The Team

from the stepping-in-the-right-direction dept

Mon, Jun 9th 2008 4:44pm — Mike Masnick

Normally, I tend to think of big media companies hiring a "Chief Digital Officer" as being severely misguided. That's because thinking "digitally" isn't a separate job function or a separate department these days. It should permeate across the business -- and assigning it to one exec pretty much guarantees that the rest of the company now thinks that it isn't their problem to think about how new technologies impact their business strategy. However, record label EMI is making some news lately, and has now hired Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka to be its VP of digital strategy. Combined with the fact that EMI also recently hired Google's former CIO Doug Merrill, it makes you wonder if the company really is taking the importance of technology seriously in establishing its business strategy. It remains to be seen if the company really is taking the time to understand these concepts across its business, or if it's pigeonholing "the tech guys" into limited roles. No matter what, it's worth watching to see if a major record label really can evolve and adapt to the changing market.

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Filed Under: cory ondrejka, douglas merritt, record labels, technology
Companies: emi, second life

4 Comments

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Marc Cohen, 9 Jun 2008 @ 6:34pm

EMI Hires Mean Little
The impact of technology on music is over. The problems now facing the recorded music industry have little to do with technology and everything to do with market dynamics. EMI needs to hire people who know how to make money from free content. These new hires from Google and Second Life will do little to improve the prospects of EMI. Check out the Ad-Supported Music Central blog at http://ad-supported-music.blogspot.com/
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- Mike (profile), 9 Jun 2008 @ 6:38pm
  
  Re: EMI Hires Mean Little
  Huh?
  
  I'd say that both Google and Second Life did a pretty good job in figuring out good ways to make money from free content...
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jun 2008 @ 10:15pm

I just hope they asked Cory "what state did you leave things in at Linden Labs?". Second Life had a very bad run of stability problems on his watch. Cory was neither a good leader at getting them solved, nor was he a good communicator to the residents.
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Thomas, 10 Jun 2008 @ 9:19am

Dotcommers Rule!`
Meh. Putting people who run servers in charge of strategy will fare badly. It's fascinating how people confuse the ability to code with the ability to make money.
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