Andy Slater who stepped down from his post as CEO of Capitol Records could receive a payout that could exceed $15 million.

Under Serious Fire……………………
Andy Slater the former CEO of Capitol recieved negative press about the ability to steer the ship but the NY Post states other concerns regarding CEO of EMI Nicoli and new Capitol/Virgin CEO Jason Flom.

Several music industry executives said Nicoli the biscuit king-cum music neophyte could find himself in the same unemployment line if he doesn’t reverse EMI’s financial fortune by June.

“He’s now operating a major music company and has no experience operating one,” said one music industry executive.

Other sources find it odd that Virgin CEO Jason Flom survived the merger while Capitol CEO Andy Slater was forced to step down.

Sources pointed out that Slater had grown Capitol’s market share to 4% at the end of 2006 where Virgin’s market share slipped to 1.75% from 2%. According to Nielson Soundscan, Capitol currently has a 4.6 market share while Virgin holds 1.5% of the market.

Sources say many Flom’s new act have had less than inspiring sales.

“Did you notice that Nicoli didn’t make any mention of Jason Flom’s accomplishment since joining EMI in the internal memo announcing his promotion,’ asked one source rhetorically. In the memo, Nicoli noted that Flom worked with acts that sold 150 million albums worldwide before coming to EMI but said nothing about his performance since joining.

One manager said, there’s no way you are bringing your artist to EMI until this thing clears up.

Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said that his wildly successful site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users. Hurley said one of the major proposed innovations is a way to allow users to be paid for content

“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”

According to Hits Daily Double: On top of Victory’s lawsuit against the band for signing an agreement with Virgin while still under contract, Hawthorne Heights has now fired their manager John Germanario and booking agent Jeremy Holgerson. Insiders are asking if the band is receiving bad information from its attorney, Dan Friedman, and making too many enemies in an ever-shrinking business.

Eron of Hawthorne Heights responds to HitsDailyDouble’s recent article on absolutepunk about the band parting ways with their manager and booking agent.

Read the message below

Don’t believe the hype, especially from HITS Daily Double (the only “news” site that didn’t pick up our story on us suing Victory because Tony is a paying advertiser, but did pick up Tony’s countersuit against us…suspicious????). The decision to terminate our agreement with our booking agent and management was purely OURS and not due to poor legal counsel as HITS and Tony would have you believe. We made the decision because we want a fresh start in every sense of the word.

New label, new management, new booking, new record and more. When a football team fires the head coach, all support staff are let go as well (maybe this wasn’t totally accurate, perhaps a better analogy is a merger in the corporate world, many times the new regime replaces everyone from the old so there are no residual feelings about the former company). Same idea applies to us.

Our lawyer, Dan Friedman has been the ONLY person that I’ve met in this entire industry filled with scumbags that I would trust. All this is, is just the most recent tactic of Tony Brummel’s to hurt us in the eyes of the industry. He’s trying to hurt our reputation and the reputation of our lawyer, (which is completely uncalled for) and build his own back up. Interesting that part of our lawsuit against Tony is about him damaging our reputation in the industry…thanks for further support on this claim!

In regards to Tony suing JT personally, If Tony is that hard up for cash and feels the need to file more ridiculous lawsuits to generate income (because he can’t sell records any more), why doesn’t he go sue the other three major labels that we have also NOT signed “exclusive recording agreements” with, so he can extort some more money from them? Imagine how big and profitable Victory would be if they treated bands right in the first place (Thursday, Hatebreed, TBS, Atreyu, HH)…he would run the biggest rock label out there right now, not just the “#1 independent label.”

Now imagine how much money he would have saved in lawsuits alone. Lawsuits aren’t cheap and I can count 5 lawsuits right now that involve us and Victory and I’m not even going to go into the other lawsuits that he’s busy fighting between other bands and producers. Perhaps the unfair treatment of bands and the lawsuits that followed are what lead to him being low on cash and therefore unable to promote records properly now?

“If you or someone you know was injured in a car accident, you need someone with the most experience in the court room, call Dyer, Garafolo, Man & Brummel. We’ll sue everyone in site and get the money you’re owed from someone, anyone, it doesn’t matter who its from.”

So hurting our reputation, doesn’t repair your own, but if he can’t have us, no one will I guess. That’s mature.

Eron

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Check out new music from the Illinois alternative act The Alpha Couple. The six piece just independently released a record produced by Dan Duszynski (The Hush Sound, Fall Out Boy, & Hawthorne Heights). Check out the live video here. No Management or legal yet. Check out the song Its a Virus.  For more information email Mike ORourke

Upcoming Show dates:
Feb 10th Keith School Rockford, Illinois
Feb 15th JT Music Midlothian, Illinois
Feb 24th Ashbary Coffee House Willow Springs, Illinois
Mar 2nd Central High School Salem, Wisconsin
Apr 20th Calvary Assembly of God Flossmoor, Illinois

The rumors that Capitol and Virgin were about to merge into a single unit were true…Here it is folks…………….

EMI is merging its North American pop, rock and urban operations. The company today announced plans to combine its Capitol and Virgin labels into a single unit called The Capitol Music Group. Jason Flom who joined EMI as chairman/CEO of Virgin in November 2005–is named chairman/CEO of the new organization. He reports directly to EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli and will now oversee the combined Capitol and Virgin rosters in the US.

Capitol president/CEO Andrew Slater is stepping down from his post of six years.

The shakeup is part of EMI Group’s recently announced effort to deliver $217 million in annual savings across its business.