This is awesome: Some British asshole named Guy Hands (I know!) led a group of investors and bought the legendary EMI records last year. They paid $6.4 billion. As you may know, I’ve enjoyed watching the majors crumble. The last news I passed along contained a phrase that went something like: “I want to watch them starve then kick in their emaciated ribs.” Well, it’s happening. And it couldn’t be happening to a bigger asshole.

Get a load of this:

From the beginning, Mr. Hands did little to ingratiate himself either to EMI’s own employees or executives within the industry, a famously clubby business wary of outsiders. He acknowledged that he is not a music person, and has turned down invitations to visit the recording studio to watch artists’ recording sessions.

Hah! Eat it, sucker. We have no use for trash-eaters like you! Choke on a dirty $100 dollar bill, why don’t you!

More fun tidbits from the article:

Rupert Murdoch had privately scoffed at (Hands’) acquisition of EMI by saying, “MySpace is going to be the future of music, not record labels.”

Hate for it to be Murdoch, but in a way, he’s right. It’s pretty amazing that someone could come along and, in 2000-motherfucking-7, believe that the music industry’s problem is bad management, not a changing landscape (IE: cheap recording costs, illegal downloading, cheap online marketing). Corporate raiders WILL NOT save this sinking ship.

Again:

“You have to understand the artist’s psyche to make it work,” said Jazz Summers, who manages The Verve, a band signed to EMI…

A fun little tidbit:

The story has even turned comical at times. After Mr. Hands discovered that some employees were laundering costs for things that were illegal (drugs and prostitutes, he said), by itemizing them on expense reports as “fruit and flowers,” he set a strict travel and entertainment policy that required receipts for every expense.

Who were these artists with a hooker stipend?! That’s what I want to know. And finally, the death knoll:

To keep costs down, Mr. Hands has clamped down on expenses while he has waited — the company is still waiting — for widespread layoffs. But despite those measures, the company will not meet a cash-flow target as part of its covenants with its lender Citigroup. So he negotiated a three-month extension.

And if you like, just read the whole damn thing. Oh, and a funny aside regarding Rupert Mudoch’s prediction: the story below this one on the page reported that Myspace was not hitting their financial goals. But at this point, I sure wouldn’t bet against them.