The new managers at EMI make Eric Nicoli, the former biscuit executive who has run the company for the past eight years, look like an impresario with the musical talent of a Daniel Barenboim and the street credibility of Keith Richards.

Terra Firma, the private equity group run by the karaoke enthusiast Guy Hands, has brought in Chris Roling, who ran finance, procurement and logistics at the chemicals group ICI, to oversee the business, backed up by Ashley Unwin, previously of Deloitte Consulting, who will see if the regional music bosses are up to the job. The implication, of course, is that what EMI needs is a little less enthusiasm for rock’n’roll and more of a focus on the P&L. But is a little grown-up executive supervision all that it will take?

Mr Nicoli’s departure from the music group was overdue. He had been with the company for more than a decade, seeing off two executive teams in recorded music and ultimately installing himself as chief executive. He watched as the value of the company fell to just over one quarter of what it was at the height of the dot-com boom. And he engaged in deal discussions half a dozen times only to see them come to nothing. EMI will, no doubt, benefit from fresh leadership.

But the new management may soon look at Mr Nicoli’s record at EMI with sympathy, even respect. Running a record company today does not simply involve managing decline, but freefall. The sale of CDs and DVDs fell by 20 per cent in the first half of the year. The growth in digital music revenues, which were growing at 45 per cent, have slowed to 13 per cent. Mr Nicoli managed the manageable part of the business - music publishing - with some success. It is striking that the only executive from the old management team who is staying is Roger Faxon, who was Mr Nicoli’s appointee to run Music Publishing. It was the parts of the business being displaced in new ways every day by everyone from iTunes to Starbucks, Napster to YouTube that he struggled with. Looking across the Atlantic at Warner Music, which is worth a third of what it recently was, it is clear that the problems go beyond management. These days, it is hard to know what good looks like in the recorded music business.

The next set of management will not be tripped up by the regulators in the way that Mr Nicoli and his colleagues were. The European Commission foiled several of EMI’s attempts to merge and grow. Not only EMI, but the music industry as a whole suffered from the outdated notion of competitive dominance in a market that is sprouting new forms of competition every day.

Mr Nicoli must have smiled yesterday as he passed the baton.

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