>>> Does this mean that Kraftwerk will be dismissed from EMI? <<<
Probably. EMI hasn't renewed the contracts of several established acts.
The most prominent is David Bowie (and the only one I can recall right
now). Even though Bowie owns all the copyrights of his work, I think that
he's allowed EMI to retain distribution rights of all his work. In the
past, his catalog went with him (as in the move from Rykodisc to
Virgin/EMI), but his relationship with the company must be decent to
allow EMI to continue to manufacture and distribute his albums, up to the
last one released through Virgin.
KW, however, is a different story. It'll probably be a
territory-by-territory decision. EMI released "Expo 2000" in Europe, but
the independent distributor that they own in the US, Caroline, home of
Astralwerks, licensed the CD-5 from EMI Germany, rather than it going
directly to Virgin or Capitol. Astralwerks usually works autonomously
from the rest of EMI, even though it's a subsidiary of Virgin, so their
US distribution's probably not in any danger. Peace.
