t sounds crazy, but you could see it on Cory Ondrejka’s face.  The body language was just different.  Just months after joining EMI Music, Ondrejka went from glowing brilliance to tired platitudes, and it was almost depressing to watch the transformation.

Douglas Merrill burned out of EMI after just months; Ondrejka decided to stick it out.  But both got fried by a business too entrenched to loosen the leash, too complicated to truly embrace anything threatening or overly-risky. 

Want paradigm-smashing execs and entrepreneurial irreverence?  On paper it looks great.  But there’s a catch – the company has to be able to support experimentation and controversy, and, it has to be willing to act in a manner that could threaten its short-term earnings.  Is that EMI?  Judging by the quick departures of Merrill and Ondrejka, the answer is no.

Instead, this is a company surviving on cash infusions from Terra Firma, a survivalist chopping its headcount with abandon. Sure, slimmer operational expenses can spruce up the balance sheet, but what happens when the army needs to go to battle?

But this is bigger than EMI.  This is a music industry so burdened by its legacy that most progress happens on the outside. And, it’s hard to really blame the situation on any one individual or company.  But anyone with any experience in the music industry has suffered through licensing pitfalls, endless legal headaches, demanding managers, uncooperative artists, and an unhealthy addiction to physical sales.

The outsider sees music, passion, blue-sky possibilities and an industry craving a revolution.  The weathered insider wishes for such naiveté.

But this goes beyond a pair of successful, outspoken netrepreneurs.  The bigger problem is ‘brain drain,’ something distressed and entrenched companies frequently battle.  The executives that need the paycheck stick around, plodding through this initiative, that meeting, another release.  The others are sniffing around, and willing to jump ship rather than risk getting stuck.

An unfair characterization?  Sure, there’s a lot more flying around on this, and guys like Merrill and Ondrejka sometimes get too much credit.  But sooner or later, the fresh outsider meets a complicated and stifling industry, and a leash is attached. Perhaps the real innovation has to happen on a smaller level – the more risk-ready indies, the younger artists less wed to recordings, the bootstrapped startups living on Ramen and leftover pizza.  The challenge for major labels is to incorporate this level of irreverence and hunger, even amidst total chaos and decline.

Paul Resnikoff, Publisher.