Guy Hands, who is leading the transformation of EMI, is finding out how difficult change can be in the music industry. The head of EMI owner Terra Firma, a private equity firm, is faced with an artist-manager revolt over his plans to remake the troubled music group. Even though the status quo will be their downfall, artists and their managers are obviously far more comfortable with the status quo than the uncertainty that goes with the pending changes.

Today the Financial Times looks at Hands' artist manager problem. Tim Clark, Robbie Williams' manager, told the Times that in two meetings with EMI he saw none of the "fresh thinking" he believes the company needs, and he has urged other mangers of EMI artists to "demand answers to hard questions."

One EMI senior adviser said EMI's changes would make the company more effective. "There will be more people focused on A&R [artist and repertoire] than there are today" and that "A&R and artist support will be a bigger share of the business than it is today." That statement conflicts with earlier reports that EMI will cut its A&R staff and depend more on new technologies to discover and develop new artists. Here's a quote from a November 2007 article at the NY Post:

"The firm also wants to reduce costs in artist-and-repertoire and marketing by $58 million by using social networks and user-generated Web sites like MySpace to discover and promote talent."

Here's the thing: criticism of the old model are far easier to come by than specific examples of badly needed "fresh thinking." Whatever changes EMI eventually makes will alienate some artists and their managers. There is simply no way to make everybody happy. EMI will be faced with a slate of potential models that will result in few to many estranged artists. If Hands shows his mettle, he will do what is best for the company in the long term and ignore the impulse to make a few superstars happy in the short term. With no activist shareholders looking over his shoulder, Hands should be able to make the proper decisions.