Will Google’s CIO Modernize EMI?

Dating coach Wayne Elise once said women don’t want an engineer who looks like an engineer, they want an engineer who looks like a record producer. In that case, women will want Douglas Merrill. The eminently progressive CIO of Google is leaving his illustrious post to become President of EMI Digital Business on April 28.

Yes, it’s a shocker: a clueful guy who looks like a surfer dude jumping from a rising company in a rising industry filled with smart people to a troubled company in a troubled industry filled with dumb people. As he said in an interview today, he likes a challenge.

It’s too early to tell, but he seems open to the vision held by independent musician Jonathan Coulton: labels must shift from controlling content to assisting artists.

The first principle is simple: Fans want to experience art and artists want to create. What the roles of the music labels are in connecting artists, helping artists create, to fans, helping fans experience, I think it’s TBD.

He’s also correct to say people will pay for music, but they won’t pay just anyone for music in any form. I paid for my Jonathan Coulton songs, but that’s because he gets all the money and I get no DRM. In a disintermediated market full of perfectly portable digital goods, nobody wants to pay a middleman for broken merchandise.

Universal CEO Doug Morris once said record execs have no idea how to hire technologists. EMI’s answer to that dilemma was absolute overkill: hire one of the most obviously-credentialed technologists on the planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if EMI became the first major record label to shift to a modular artist services model. Either way, having an ex-Googler around will mean a lot less of the typical record-label bullshit from EMI.