Citing an internal company memo it obtained, the business daily said that Guy Hands, head of Terra Firma, which won control of EMI in August, envisioned “fundamental change” at the music label.

EMI, the world’s third-biggest music company, is home to The Beatles and Coldplay, and its roster also includes The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Janet Jackson, Norah Jones, Robbie Williams and The Spice Girls.

Without mentioning any specific artists, Hands wrote: “While many spend huge amounts of time working with their label to promote, perfect and endorse their music, some unfortunately simply focus on negotiating for the maximum advance … advances which are often never repaid.”

In the memo, which was sent out this week, he added that once EMI’s own standards were raised, “It will be open to us to choose which artists we wish to work with and promote.”

Hands also said that EMI’s compensation system for recording executives “does not encourage the right behaviours or reward the right actions.”

At EMI, executives are rewarded for signing up new acts, regardless of whether or not the label receives a return on the advance it has put forth.

“What worries me is that the existing structures have been put in over a couple of decades and unpicking them in a way that releases the good in the company is not going to happen overnight,” Hands wrote.

The British music publisher is struggling with sliding sales in the United States and said earlier this year that it will not pay any more shareholder dividends until 2009.

Terra Firma’s bid valued the company at 3.2 billion pounds (4.6 billion euros, 6.7 billion dollars) including debt, after a lengthy takeover battle with US group Warner Music.

Bhangra-pop singer Daler Mehndi’s words were no music to the ears of mediapersons as he picked up a verbal duel with them here Wednesday evening over controversies surrounding him in recent years.

The singer seemed quite irritated by the media’s handling of his image in the last three to four years and even singled out journalists to remark about how they were trying to run him down. He even made personal attacks on a couple of journalists.

The press conference soon turned into a free-for-all as the journalists and Mehndi traded charges till the singer left the venue in a huff.

The controversy was centred on the lyrics of one of his songs where he indirectly attacks the previous Congress regime in Punjab.

Mehndi was arrested by the Punjab police in October 2003, when Amarinder Singh of the Congress was chief minister, on charges of being involved in a multi-million immigration scam.

He was accused of accepting money from people for taking them abroad as members of his musical group and thus help them immigrate illegally. His brother Shamsher Singh was also arrested in the same case.

Mehndi, who is performing in Punjab these days in connection with the launch of a private Punjabi TV channel owned by a leading politician of the ruling Akali Dal, denied that the lyrics of his Punjabi song were targeted at Amarinder Singh or the Congress.

He had recently stated that he had penned the song while languishing in Patiala jail in 2003.

“I don’t understand why the media hounds me everywhere. No one wants to write about my singing or the social work I have done for earthquake relief, Kargil heroes or tree plantation in Delhi. You just want to run me down,” Mehndi lamented.

Pop star Britney Spears reportedly allowed a man to snort cocaine off her chest during a wild party at her Hollywood mansion.

Guitarist Scott Kohler has claimed that the 25-year-old singer invited him and ten other strangers for the party – two days after she lost visiting rights to her kids.

The 29-year-old man said that Spears downed vodka, then stripped to her underwear and said: “Let’s get in the Jacuzzi.”

Kohler alleges the singer accepted an offer of cocaine from a fellow partygoer, after he “joked he wanted to do a line off her chest, and she agreed.”

He also claimed that she “seemed drunk” and took coke herself. But she still passed a court-ordered drug test the next day.

“She was in a great mood. She didn’t have a care in the world,” The Sun quoted Kohler, as telling In Touch magazine.