According to the annual financial report for EMI, smallest of the Big 4 record labels, the company lost 624 million euros (just over $800 million using today’s conversion rates) in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2010.
The report is prepared each year by EMI’s owner, Terra Firma owned Maltby Capital, a Terra Firma owned company which purchased EMI in 2007.
Maltby Capital Chairman Stephen Alexander began the report by addressing developments in recent months suggesting Citigroup, the principal lender in Terra Firma’s acquisition of EMI, might take over the company due to an alleged breach of lending terms.
Alexander wrote, “despite the issues around the financing structure and the related public speculation, both divisions of EMI have shown marked progress in their underlying performance during the course of the last twelve months.”
This translates into losing less money than the previous year, which saw a loss of more than 1.7 billion euros. He also admitted having no actual first hand knowledge of the legal proceedings between Citigroup and Terra Firma.
There is a glimmer of hope for the future if they can survive long enough. EMI’s goal, it says, is becoming “a comprehensive rights management company that can take full advantage of global opportunities in all markets for music to the maximum benefit of its artists and songwriters.”
But are they doing enough to make that a reality? The report’s section on EMI’s recorded music division focused almost entirely on a handful of best selling artists. Diversification into new areas like merchandise distribution and their live recording/distribution service, Abbey Road Live, were almost a footnote.
[More]>>
Result for: pennsylvania
Iowa senator Tom Harkin recently became chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. On Monday, Harkin vowed to look into the possibilities of cancer risks from mobile phone use. He said he was concerned that nobody was able to definitively prove that mobile phones could not cause cancer.
“I’m reminded of this nation’s experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings about smoking tobacco and the final definitive conclusion that cigarettes cause lung cancer,” Harkin said. It is estimated that 4 billion people worldwide use mobile phones regularly.
Harkin called a hearing of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, to examine the issue on Monday. “I will pursue this beyond this panel, with the National Institutes of Health,” he said afterward.
However, Harkin should be aware that an enormous amount of research has been conducted already on this issue, and no link has ever been found to prove that mobile phones do cause cancer. Simply saying that nobody has been able to disprove it does not make it more plausible, and it is slightly concerning at least that an elected Senator would pursue something on the grounds that nobody could disprove its existence - but it isn’t surprising.
Of course, there are reports occasionally that do show that there “might” be links in cases, and just recently the Environmental Working Group showed that radio wave emissions vary from one mobile phone brand to the next. Even with this taken into account however, all the research has shown that mobile phones do not emit waves capable of damaging DNA in cells in a human body.
[More]>>
Result for: pennsylvania
Two men from Pennsylvania have set the record for most text messages sent in a month, with one man sending and receiving 217,000 total. Although both men were on an unlimited text messaging plan, one man, Nick Andes recieved a bill for $26,000 USD at the end of the month.
The bill was two inches thick.
“It came in a box that cost $27.55 to send to me,” Andes said. He immediately called T-Mobile after he “panicked” over the bill and the carrier has said they have credited the account and are looking into the charges.
Andes added that he has been texting for almost a decade and wanted to become the world record holder for most in a month. The previous record was 182,000, set by Deepak Sharma of India in 2005.
The second man, Doug Klinger, and Andes, set their phones to be able to send multiple messages and found they could send up to 6000 texts per day some days.
“Most were either short phrases or one word, ‘LOL’ or ‘Hello,’ things like that, with tons and tons of repeats,” added the men.
