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Reportedly, Coldplay will release its new album through EMI this summer, the band’s manager has said Thursday. This comes just a month after he threatened to withhold the record in protest of major cost-cutting by the label’s new owners.
Guy Hands, the private equity investor for EMI quickly unnerved musicians by looking for ways to trim the fat.
Hands’ strategy included laying off up to a third of EMI’s 6,000 employees, centralizing marketing, dumping underachieving artists and focusing on discovering new talent.
The manager for Coldplay, Dave Holmes, criticized Hands’ approach, saying last month, Coldplay “was in no hurry” to deliver its next album, adding, “Why would you want to release an album with a record company in the midst of massive layoffs? Coldplay have a lot of options.”
But he said on Thursday as saying that the as-yet-untitled project, the group’s fourth, would come out in early summer, followed by a tour of North America and Europe.
Holmes appeared to back away from his earlier comments by saying “we kind of steered clear” of the outrage that greeted Hands’ restructuring plans.