Article Summary: 'New Digital Recruit is Upbeat About Reshaping EMI's Future With Downloads' By Katie Allen

The key points of this article (published on Wednesday 24th January 2007, The Guardian) are:

• EMI's global head of digital, Barney Wragg, believes EMI has huge potential to harness a rapidly growing market for music downloads.
• He says "Over the next three to six months, you're definitely going to see a change in EMI's profile in the digital music market" and "the future is very bright for EMI."
• It i s predicted that growthof digital downloads is likely to slow this year and that it will be some time before downloads can make up for softer overall music sales, which have been declining for years.
• Analysts say EMI will have to outperform the rest of the market if it wants digital to pick up the slack for slower CD sales any time soon.
• Times have been tough for EMI in recent months, and in the past three weeks its share price has fallen more than 20p.
• It suffered poor sales over the crucial Christmas period.
• Less than a fortnight into the new year, the group axed the head of its music division, Alain Levy, who declared last year that "the CD as it is right now is dead", but was criticised because he had done little to fill the gap left by falling physical sales with digital downloads.
• EMI's latest results showed digital revenues had jumped by 68% to £74m in the first half. They represented a growing share of total revenues at 8.5% but that is still lower than for the music market as a whole, where a tenth of global sales are digital.
• Analysts say that a lack of detail has made it hard to predict how much new revenue streams from digital will compensate for softer CD sales.