If, like I, you have been reading articles under headlines such as ‘Deadline day looms for ailing EMI’ or ‘EMI facing crisis’ you could be forgiven for assuming that EMI was in fact an acronym for England’s Music Industry as a whole, rather than the forlorn single enterprise it is. Consensus amongst analysts of the failing record label is that EMI’s decline is a precursor to more general woes across the industry, with statistics such as ‘30% drop in music sales’ used to support a case of terminal degeneration for licensing and distributing music.

It wasn’t always this way of course. Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. initially launched with great success, most notably as the label that signed The Beatles. Other successes included The Sex Pistols, despite charges of capitalism on Never Mind The Bollocks…, and Kate Bush, despite the contractual wrangling for creative control. The ride has rarely seemed smooth, and perhaps because of that back-catalogue, to a newer generation it has always seemed an empire built on past glories; forever the last days of Rome.

Anthony Bourdain is a chef and documenter of life in the restaurant world. ‘When you hit the panic button and call in the consultants, or start taking austerity measures, you may as well close the doors for good,’ he says of restaurateurs. ‘It’s just good money after bad.’ I don’t suppose anyone on the board at EMI had read Kitchen Confidential when they offered the UK’s largest record deal to Robbie Williams. Entering the new millennium in ‘Loadsamoney’ style by spending £80 million for four albums from a man just past his peak and recently split from his creative spar, Guy Chambers, EMI unsurprisingly failed to stop a trend of declining profits.

Since that cash haemorrhage the company has been slowly bleeding its assets, striving to find some sort of life-support and stabilise. CEOs have come and gone, profits and shares tumbled year on year. No-one, it seems, can make the damn thing work. Last week news came in that EMI was in further financial difficulties, the antler decal nestling over investor Guy Hands’ throne now resembling more flogged horse than prized kill. He’s probably wondering whether the company’s initials stand for Eating My Investment.

Pundits would have us believe that the decline of Britain’s best known record label is symptomatic of the industry as a whole. It isn’t. Instead it’s reflective of the major labels’ failings and suggests an imminent end to what would be their comparative blip on the history of music.

For a wonderful insight into that history, The Hit Men by Richard Dannon is the place to go. How a one-time artistic expression that previously eked a living for few, changed its course of thousands of years and went global from the ashes of the Second World War is a fascinating tale. The influence of the mafia, of bribery, corruption and extortion, the payola scandal and Alan Freed in America are all worthwhile anecdotes. Yet the real story is how the major labels, from rough and inequitable beginnings, managed to turn themselves into multinational concerns turning over billions a year for their shareholders. As we, the consumer’s, budgets and desires escalated so the major labels became profitable enterprises capable of squeezing out competition with takeovers and buy outs.

It seems strange then that, at only a little over fifty years old, the Big Four (EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal as they are reduced to now) have regressed from riches to rags. How, in the twelve years since PolyGram was taken over, can these leaders in business have relinquished their power so quickly and irreversibly?

The answer is technology, and in this case the hand that feedeth with the invention of the gramophone hath taken away with the MP3. Despite an auspicious beginning to their relationship with the music industry (a lawsuit with the Apple record label over naming rights) the geeks from Silicon Valley and Apple Inc. have gone on to dismantle the entire trade in a little over a decade. Common theory is that this is a bad thing, that the industry is dying through the decline of its flagship companies, but I disagree.

To think that the end is nigh, and anything other than a duopoly between Apple Inc. and free file-sharers spells trouble for the music industry, is to ignore its history prior to the last century. For, without an organised distribution service, without financing and promotion, music previously had a long and illustrious career. It is true that no-one bought young Beethoven a Cadillac, even if he complained of a lack of return on his hits, yet his music survived and was heard by many. The basic foundation of music, playing and listening, has developed now beyond just public performance, and shared broadcasts of recorded music will not suddenly disappear because the majors do. The people who finance the recording, or distribute the end result, may change. But does that matter?

In the 1980s British car manufactures were bemoaning their fate, sensing perhaps their demise. It came, and the end of manufacturing in this country caused much consternation. There were sad side-effects, job losses and recessions. Yet the car industry continued, today’s vehicles wildly improved from those early models. We live in a world where the Brits don’t make cars, but we still drive cars and they don’t cost a fortune or fall apart.

The car survived its industry shake-up, and I expect the same for music. Major labels will surely give up trying to compete with consumer desires but we should not fear life without them. Their undoing has been largely of their own making. A refusal to work with online music, around file sharing or to update their methods has left them unseated and unsteady. Unfortunately this will mean bad times for some individuals, employees of a system that is fading, but hopefully they can do what their masters have not, retrain and understand the world that the industry now operates in.

Because there will still be jobs around. The traditional cry that independent labels cannot compete is no longer true and niches are there to be found and lived in for many. Rough Trade has survived for 30 years. Ninja Tunes continues to serve an active fan base of electronic connoisseurs. Perhaps soon these companies, and more, can operate without constant fear of takeovers or mergers, to which their beliefs and ideas would become lost in the corporate offices of bigger firms.

As for Apple Inc., well they deserve everything they have. They have single-handedly made music more accessible, more affordable and more portable for the majority. They will surely have their turn of loathing and complaint from us because things change; we change them as consumers. EMI might be on the wane, but it needn’t spell disaster for England’s music industry.

Picture courtesy of Un ragazzo chiamato Bi