FOUR FLOORS above the bustle of Chelsea Market, a foodie paradise in Manhattan, are the quiet and spacious offices of EMI Publishing. Visitors enter an airy atrium with a grand piano where some of EMI’s stars have played informal gigs. In this tranquil space it’s hard to believe this is a company in turmoil. That’s because this part of it is not.

In London, where EMI’s recorded-music division has its headquarters, a massacre is taking place. Wags have dubbed the company EM Bye Bye since the £3.2 billion takeover by venture capitalist Guy Hands.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 of EMI’s 5,500 employees are to lose their jobs. The talent has rebelled. Radiohead have quit, the Rolling Stones jumped ship last week and Robbie Williams is on a go-slow.

However, life goes on as usual in publishing — almost. Top executives have been streaming out of the door. The only big name from the old guard to survive is Roger Faxon, head of the publishing business. He might have a plan to save not only EMI but the music business.

There are two main sides to the industry. Recorded music makes all the noise. It signs acts, manages bands and makes the headlines. Sadly, its profits are dwindling as the digital age buries the CD.

Publishing is less eye-catching but makes money. It collects royalties every time songs are played on radio, television, in films, advertisements, ring tones or video games. It’s a penny-counting business but the pennies add up. EMI has the rights to Over The Rainbow, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town as well as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and work by Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys, Duffy, Kanye West, and Jay-Z.

Publishing has long been EMI’s biggest asset. In a recent interview Hands said the publishing assets accounted for 80% of his purchase of EMI.

Growth is slow, though, and the stock market has never shown much interest. That’s part of the reason why Hands took EMI private in the first place. As the pressure mounts on Hands to repay his backers, EMI is pushing publishing into the limelight, along with Faxon, the division’s bookish chief executive and chairman.

The music business needs to rethink fundamentally how it makes money, said Faxon. “The record industry is about performers but what it has become is a seller of discs. It has been focused on one product,” he said. Selling digital downloads of songs doesn’t solve that problem; it just swaps one technology for another. What’s needed is a new model for music — and publishing, he believes, has the beginnings of that new model.

EMI Publishing manages or owns 1.3m copyrights. Faxon said: “The truth is that, just as a song’s copyright has an immense number of outlets, the music does, too. If you manage it as a set of rights, relationships with others who want to use it, then you have a much different business plan.”

Using publishing’s model would mean a shift to “micro-values” — small amounts of money — from a vast array of sources.

The irony for the music business is that while fortunes are being lost, music has never been more accessible. It’s now possible to listen to almost anything almost anywhere. Faxon believes there is a positive future for music as an industry, it just needs some creative thinking about how it might make more money.

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