After less than a year with the major label EMI, Douglas Merrill is leaving his post as president of digital music. When Merrill left Google as their CIO last April, it was a bit shocking to tech bloggers because he was blowing off a hugely successful company for an industry trying to take on the daunting task of adapting to the murky new world of digital music technology. It seemed, until today, that Merrill, a fan of digital music groundbreaking band Nine Inch Nails, was up for the task.
Reuters reports: “London-based EMI said digital music sales now make up more than a fifth of all its revenues and the company is completing the integration of all digital functions into its business operations and will no longer run a stand-alone digital unit. Merrill had previously overseen the digital unit.”
EMI is basically claiming that Merrill left because his department has been combined with their “main operations.” Meanwhile, Cory Ondrejka, the co-founder of Second Life, was promoted to executive vice president of digital marketing.
Perhaps if Merrill were able to get EMI’s Beatles catalog released digitally, his run would’ve been more successful, not to mention Radiohead had already jumped ship before he got there.