Elio Leoni-Sceti’s four children look at him quizzically when he talks about records. The chief executive of EMI Music is constantly reminded that his industry has been transformed since he was a youngster in Rome listening to The Beatles.

“Record is a word that does not exist in the vocabulary of a 15-year old,” said Leoni-Sceti.

It has taken the music industry a while to catch up with changing consumer behaviour. EMI has taken longer than most. The decline of the old album model and the rise of the iPod culture hastened its takeover by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma in 2007. Last week Hands wrote off half the £2.3 billion he invested, accepting that he is likely to make a loss on the deal.

Still, Leoni-Sceti, used to selling Cillit Bang stain remover and Airwick air freshener during his 16 years at Reckitt Benckiser, believes he is reconfiguring EMI for the MySpace generation and this involves more than chasing after illegal downloaders.

“As an industry, we lost touch with consumer behaviour,” he said. “Because we didn’t understanding it, we didn’t have the right product at the place and time where they intend to buy it.” Leoni-Sceti’s job is it to reconnect both sides and make a profit out of his products along the way.

This means more work for artists. All but the biggest bands such as Coldplay will have to rethink the tradition of producing a 12-track album every second year. “Kids have an attention span that lasts a split-second,” said Leoni-Sceti. “As an act, if you do not keep that relationship going on a weekly basis you lose a bunch of them, who go somewhere else and forget about you.”

He cited the example of Lady Antebellum, a band with its roots in country music that posts a weekly “webisode” of its activities on its site. “If we could add to this a track a month, that would be absolutely great. We are moving that way but we are not there yet. Continuity in the relationship needs to be developed.”

Terra Firma has stripped £200m from EMI’s £700m cost base, including the loss of 2,000 jobs. Leoni-Sceti must reinvent what is left as a marketing machine that can distribute music far and wide, and not just for its own artists.

EMI has just struck a deal on behalf of the Brighton Port Authority — DJ Norman Cook’s latest project — to use his music in a Ford commercial, the first time EMI has done so without owning the master tapes. Damon Albarn of Blur is also allowing his work to be used in an environmental campaign by British Gas.

Linking brands with music through advertising might sound like a turn-off for bands, but Leoni-Sceti believes that done in the right way it is a big opportunity. “If there is great music and a great message, their association reinforces each other rather than weakening each other.”

The company has a 50-strong music-services team dedicated to finding new income streams. It aims to tap into the growing popularity of live events by better merchandising or selling a recording of a concert to the audience as they file out of the venue.

That is all very well when labels are signing up-and-coming artists, but the industry cannot achieve success in new areas without established artists signing contracts that are quite different from the old three-album deals.

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