SonyBMG, the world’s No 2 record label, has had a rough couple of years. Boardroom splits, a European Commission competition inquiry and a loss of market share have left the company reeling after its 2004 creation from the merger of Sony’s and Bertelsmann’s record labels.

Now, though, in Europe at least, Ged Doherty, the chairman and chief executive of Sony BMG Music Entertainment Europe, wants to change the tune, and SonyBMG has a plan to reinvent itself by binning the requirement for demo tapes and boldly setting up online demos for fans as well as executives to judge.

From Monday the next Arctic Monkeys must upload a video or MP3 audio package to a new SonyBMG website where it will be assessed by label bosses and any musician or fan who chooses to log on at columbiademos.co.uk or rcademos.co.uk.

The change is necessary because Mr Doherty does not believe that recorded music, overall, will recover. “Digital sales are not going to make up the decline in physical CD revenue,” he says. “By 2010 income from CDs will be down 50 per cent. The old world is gone for ever.

“We need to enter into a new relationship with our artists, where they see us as partners rather than the enemy.” The demo blogs are designed to create an open, transparent access point for musicians.

“Artists will get a quicker, fairer response to their demos online from a wider group of people,” says Mr Doherty, whose latest signing, the singer-songwriter Ross Copperman, broke download records with a track given free to iTunes. The theory is that, if signed, SonyBMG artists will continue to offer music and gain feedback through the company portal.

Yet, that will not be enough. The old-style, royalties-based major-label deal is dead, Mr Doherty says. Revenue from live concerts, sponsorship, mobile deals and merchandise will be shared with SonyBMG.

“I’m willing to give up more of my revenue if artists are willing to give up theirs,” he says. “By 2010 we want joint ventures with all our artists. We have just signed our first ‘50-50 on everything’ deal.”

The Glaswegian, 48, believes that the “dust of the merger has settled” with new signings, including The View and The Gossip, hitting the charts, while the debut album from Amy Winehouse’s producer, Mark Ronson, is tipped to be a multimillion seller. SonyBMG has a 23 per cent share of UK album sales so far this year.

He even claims not to be inconvenienced by the Brussels investigation into the merged company’s alleged “dominant position”. However, it is not a topic on which he cares to hold an extended conversation. He says: “It’s in the background and I cannot influence the decision. I’m just getting on with changing the shape of our business.”

Mr Doherty was catapulted into the role left vacant after Rob Stringer was promoted to New York-based president of Sony Music Labels Group. A long-term “No 2”, he was taken aback by the response when he first suggested as boss that CD sales were in terminal decline. “I was used to everyone ignoring me,” he jokes.

Not any more. Though not a natural blogger, he was quick to join the queue of media executives keen to flaunt their cool. He now eagerly relates meetings with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne on his site, gedblog.vox.com. “We might make mistakes, and I might look an idiot at times, but I don’t care because it’s the only way we will learn,” he says. “Our world is turning upside down.”

To survive, there are plans to expand in television, to capitalise on Mr Stringer’s strategic partnership with Simon Cowell, which has generated a string of hit shows, such as The X Factor. Mr Doherty also hopes to revitalise interest in the back catalogue, perhaps only for mobile phones.

If the regulators let him, the ideas are the right ones, but getting back to growth is going to be hard work.

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