Profile: EMI – creative programmes for creative people

What do Robbie Williams, Janet Jackson and the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo have in common? The answer is EMI – now the world’s third largest music company.

The EMI Group works in two main areas – recorded music and music publishing. It records the music of some 1,500 artists, and owns or administers over one million copyrights, from The Beatles to UB40. To produce recorded music, EMI manages some 70 record label companies (such as Virgin), which find, sign, develop and promote the artists. EMI also owns six recording studios (the famous Abbey Road studios is one). EMI publishes music and markets it, manufactures CDs, DVDs and music cassettes at seven sites, and sends them to music retailers around the world from 25 distribution centres. It directly employs some 10,000 people in over 45 countries. Turnover in the year to March 31 2001 was £2.7 billion.

Diverse stakeholders

EMI has an interesting stakeholder group, which presents the corporate centre with some challenges in terms of identity – and focus areas for CSR. EMI deals primarily with distributors and record shops, rather than directly with consumers, but it nonetheless needs to maintain a reputation with a huge diversity of end-buyers – young people, lovers of indigenous music from around the world, classical music buffs (interestingly the latter are some 5% of the world music market). Some of EMI’s record labels are joint ventures, as are some distribution centres, in far-flung parts of the world.

Then there are the artists – Robbie Williams, Sting, the Spice Girls, Radiohead, Texas, Coldplay, Sir Simon Rattle – they are independent of the company, but EMI either records their music or ‘caretakes’ the songs they write. In theory, the company might have to respond to the social concerns of Snoop Dogg one day, and the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo the next (their release of Canto Gregoriano on EMI Classics sold six million copies worldwide in 1993). Many of EMI’s artists do indeed approach the company for support for causes they espouse – Claudio Abbado, for example, is donating his royalties from his new recording of Verdi’s Requiem to benefit families of firefighters and police officers who died on Sept 11 – and EMI is making a donation for every CD sold.

Beyond this, EMI must protect its artists’ right to revenue, yet maintain a reputation with the burgeoning audience of the future, many of whom see nothing wrong in downloading music from the Internet for free. Meanwhile, its employees tend to be young creative types for whom corporate mission statements and principles are anathema.

Management

Kate Dunning is EMI’s group director for environmental and community affairs – her remit covers EMI’s 48 countries of direct operation. She reports to Amanda Conroy, the group’s senior vice-president for corporate communications, who in turn reports to EMI’s chairman, Eric Nicoli. Nicoli takes personal responsibility for CSR issues at Board level.

Kate has a central budget for group purposes. Individual operating companies also have their own pots, and Kate works with a network of staff whose interests include environmental and social issues.

EMI is a member of the PerCent Club – it took the Club’s millennium logo in December 2000. Its community contribution worldwide is £1.9 million, including cash, donations of CDs and employee time, gifts in kind, secondments, and office space. This figure will grow next year with the announcement of EMI’s decision to donate an additional $1m to provide relief for victims of the terrorist attacks in the US.

The company currently leaves volunteering to individual choice. There are no internal policies as yet, although employees are informally encouraged to volunteer and fundraise, and EMI runs a matched giving and a payroll-giving scheme. Encouraging more strategic employee engagement is a future aim.

Environment

The company’s environmental track-record provides a clue to how this could develop. EMI takes a keen interest in managing its environmental impacts, and this is an area of work of which it is particularly proud. Company literature on the subject is unusually fresh and direct. It challenges its own employees to take responsibility for their environmental impacts while at work – with a personal commitment from the chairman, Eric Nicoli, to play his part. EMI’s 2000 review ‘brands’ one fictional employee as a ‘global warmer’ for not switching off his stereo and PC at night, another as a ‘river polluter’ for printing out emails. Ordering fewer couriers and promotional samples, fitting light sensors, switching off screens when not in use – these and other practical tips for ‘making a difference’ combine with examples of good practice from EMI offices and labels around the world.

A big new focus is the Internet, and how EMI can use it to reduce environmental impacts. Allowing the public to download recordings digitally – and legally – is one area being explored. Transporting point-of-sale material to trade customers, and press-packs to media contacts is another. EMI is one of 12 companies to sign up to work with Forum for the Future’s new two-year Digital Europe project, which will look, with the European Commission, at the social and environmental implications of the Internet.

On the downside, the Internet opens the way to music piracy. Communication on this is unequivocal, and streamed through the music industry’s representative bodies – such as the BPI in the UK (British Phonographic Industry) and the RIAA in the US (Recording Industry Association of America). The argument is that music companies can only afford to invest in music production if they are compensated, and their job is to ensure that their artists’ work is not stolen.

Going back to the environment, internally, EMI operating companies report annually on their environmental performance. An annual short-form report give summary statistics on issues like hazardous waste, ozone depletion, use of energy, solvents, transport, and packaging. Fuller information is released through the internet (http://www.emigroup.com/enviro). The 2001 review combines environment and community for the first time, and the intention is to develop internal reporting on community impacts to a similar level.

Beyond the environment, the company describes its community programme in terms of global, over-arching themes, covering an array of smaller projects.

Arts and culture, and the MSF

A big theme for EMI, as you would expect, is arts and culture. Group-wide charitable giving is channelled through the Music Sound Foundation (MSF), an independent UK charity, set up in 1997 to mark EMI Records’ centenary. MSF aims to improve music education in the UK. EMI makes an annual donation, seconds the Foundation’s administrator, Janie Orr, and provides office facilities, enabling the charity to run with no overheads.

MSF has spent more than £1.2 million since set-up. Typically, it works with schools, helping them gain Arts College status as part of the UK government’s specialist schools programme. It funds capital projects to help the schools improve their performing arts facilities, which is then matched by capital and revenue funding from the government. EMI employees provide support – as governors of the schools, for example, or through employee fundraising initiatives – and the company hosts visits for teachers and schools to gain a better understanding of the music business.

Thirteen schools have become arts colleges through MSF’s intervention so far. It would be interesting to look at how the company could further leverage this work, using its network to open up opportunities for the colleges’ alumni, as ‘helping others to shape a better future for themselves’ is a growing trend for EMI’s community programme.

MSF also helps music students, teachers and schools to buy musical instruments and training, and funds £25,000 a year in bursaries.

Cultural diversity, globalization

EMI has made a public commitment to develop music from the local culture and languages wherever it operates. It contributes – and profits – by finding audiences for its artists beyond their local markets, and cross-fertilizing music from one tradition to another. Its world music label, Hemisphere, features over 50 musical genres from around the world, and a new international catalogue, available online, lists some 1500 ethnic music albums. Growth in the number and quality of artists in turn leads to jobs for producers and studio staff, among others, so there is a positive economic development story to tell. Take Manu Chao, the Virgin-signed French artist, whose band Mano Negra toured the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Manu’s work is a heady, multilingual mix of samba, salsa, reggae, and Arabic music, among others. New bands such as Café Tacuba from Mexico and Fabulosos Cadillac in Argentina cite Manu as a key inspiration, giving them the confidence to open Latin American music to a much wider audience. Manu highlights Virgin’s flexible approach to new musical forms and ways of recording.

At group level, EMI undertakes major arts sponsorships – the Royal Opera House, ENO, Albert Hall, Glyndebourne, Tate Britain. Through its network of companies, it also funds more grass-roots, community-based arts projects, such as the Chicken Shed theatre.

Empowerment

After the environment and arts education/arts sponsorship, the theme of empowerment shines through particularly strongly. Virgin Records in the UK supports Business Action on Homelessness, a BITC initiative, designed to help single homeless people into work placements, mentoring and training. It is also working to raise awareness across the UK music industry of how business can help – by distributing a sponsored video on the programme, speaking to HR personnel about the programme. EMI Compact Disc at Uden in the Netherlands is working with the local government to help the long-term unemployed back into work through training and subsequent employment opportunities.

Minority ethnic communities are a key area of interest. EMI funds the EMI/Selena and EMI/Nat King Cole scholarships, set up in memory of EMI artists to support Latino and African-American students studying for a university arts degree. Its US label Capitol Records works with Y.E.S to Jobs, providing mentoring to minority high school students interested in a career in the entertainment industry.

Youth issues

What about young people and their issues? Disenfranchisement? Drugs? The more sinister undercurrents in the club culture? This area is already on the up for EMI, and has real potential, particularly if designed to reinforce the company’s empowerment and arts programmes. It should also strike a chord with – and help mobilise – its young, creative workforce.

Most activity here is currently among the record labels, such as Virgin. Also in the US, where EMI supports community projects targeting ‘at risk’ young people. The company contributes corporately to drugs projects through the BPI in the UK. Through the RIAA in the US, it supports a national programme to help parents ‘Talking with Kids about Tough Issues’ – violence, sex, drugs and alcohol, for example. After consultation with parents’ and teachers’ groups in the US, the RIAA will also take responsibility for labelling music with explicit lyrics and explicit depictions of violence or sex.

EMI is a fascinating business, with very diverse stakeholders. Despite this complexity, it has identified clear priorities and communicated about its environmental impacts in a simple, direct way. Particularly impressive is the way it mobilises its employees to take responsibility and play their part – case studies within EMI suggest this really is reducing environmental impacts.

Now the company plans to tackle its community impacts with similar vigour, and to report more fully on its social impacts. The themes of empowerment, arts, youth and diversity can be mutually reinforcing, increasing the programme’s impacts. EMI’s environmental track record bodes well for these future aims.