EMI CharimanTalks About The Future Of The Industry

Reuters News Service is running an interview with EMI Chairman Eric Nicoli that focuses heavily on digital music.  Nothing earth shattering here at all, but it’s always interesting to hear an old school industry heavyweight try to talk about the future:

"…We’ve moved on from the days when the main impact of digital technology was to harm our industry by facilitating rampant online and physical theft," he said. "The day is surely within our sights when digital growth outstrips physical decline and we can all compete for share of a growing pie…."

"The pessimists will say (the death of the "album" now that individual tracks can be downloaded)…is a problem, but our research suggest that the net effect of unbundling is a positive…"

"…We thought subscriptions (services such as Napster and Rhapsody that offer unlimited music for a monthly fee) would be huge — it hasn’t been," he said.

Mobile music, apart from phone ringtunes, has also developed more slowly than many had hoped."We’re at year zero — if that — with mobile," Nicoli said…

Read the full Reuters story here via Yahoo.