New EMI hire: “I neither buy nor hear much new music.”

I thought it was a good thing when Guy Hands and EMI hired Douglas Merrill. It makes sense to get someone who really gets technology involved in the label. But Cory Ondrejka, the new hire under Merrill is making me scratch my head.

First off, he co-founded Linden Labs of Second Life infamy. I hate SL. Call me a luddite, but I’ve railed against SL before and think it will go down in history as one of those, “yeah, it was kinda neat as a beta thing and sure you can see how cool things might have come from those seeds but it never was gonna work.” Like Apple’s Newton.

Anyone with SL credentials is someone who knows how to sell air, fluff. Sure, the marketing wonks have glommed onto it like flies to sugar but the basic CMO needs something to show s/he knows what’s cool and hip in tech these days. In terms of anyone actually getting something more than a PR newswire release out of the dough they’ve spent in SL, I can’t think of any major company who would bother trying to pretend there is a ROI.

Secondly, the guy thinks the iTunes store is too complicated.

Even when I knew I wanted something – Accelerate – I had the problem that I was traveling with my MacBook Air, so buying a CD was useless. I had never setup the iTMS on that computer and you would be amazed at how hard Apple has made that process. It’s like they don’t want to sell me music. Then, once I did remember all the passwords I needed, I couldn’t figure out whether the iTunes download was DRM free

How hard Apple has made the process? Over 3 billion songs sold. Over 100 million consumers. This guy co-founded a virtual world and he can’t figure out how to install iTunes on his computer? For real? It’s one install and if you already have an account, it’s one password. There are grandmothers in Boise who buy music off of iTunes and Cory claims it’s too damn difficult? I smell serious BS.

And finally, the money quote:

“I neither buy nor hear much new music.”

Merrill is smart, a NIN fan, and comes from the premiere tech company of our day. I’m sure he could have found someone who at least has a passion for music. Yeah, Cory was Navy/NSA. I’ve met some of those. One is a brilliant mathematician who had two masters and his PhD from MIT and was at Columbia getting yet another degree in the Mathematics of Finance. Smart guy and I liked him but I wouldn’t hire him for anything music related unless I needed to do some of those underwater tests that make dolphins go crazy. Smart doesn’t mean right for the job.

It’s OK. AC DC is joining The Eagles, Journey, and others by going directly to Wal mart to sell the next album. The actual need for a major record label is diminishing by the day. And EMI has that Citibank debt service to worry about. By the time this guy figures out the music industry is rife with a complex web of inter-tangled legal rights, crazy overhead, and archaic systems, the label system will be dead and buried.

I only hope Cory figures out how to buy music on iTunes by then. It’s only the single largest retailer of music in the world.

P.S. If Cory had worked at World of Warcraft (or Club Penguin, etc), I would have a different opinion of his virtual world experience. I’m not against virtual worlds en masse. WoW is an incredibly successful, rich, and vibrant community that creates billions in free cash flow and wastes millions of hours of time for its subscribers. Not my cup of tea but I can appreciate its success from both the entertainment and business side. The only success I see at Second Life is getting big business marketers to cough up dough for a piddling audience.