Time to take a look at what happened in the music biz – for the week ending Feb 4, it was all about EMI, AEG, ticketing, and the Rolling Stones.

EMI now officially belongs to Citigroup, with a swift bye bye to Terra Firma and Guy Hands. It appears that helming EMI for three and a half years only cost Hands and his posse 1.6 billion pounds. In a statement, EMI said it’s “business as usual.” I’m not sure what that means given that in recorded music, nothing is business as usual in 2011. The potential buyers are already circling. BMG Rights Management is the front-runner, though the company many only interested in the masters since it is unlikely that the publishing concern, if merged, would pass through anti-trust. Warner Music Group is also on the block, as is MySpace. It’s a fire sale all around. 

There’s a new ticketing player in town to give Live Nation Entertainment a run for its money. AEG is teaming start-up technology company Outbox Enterprises, founded by former Ticketmaster chief Fred Rosen, to sell tickets to events at its 105 arenas and theaters. To the cloud! To the cloud!  Outbox works on all devices and is reportedly more ‘nimble’ that Ticketmaster’s systems. To quote AEG Live chief Randy Phillips about the state of the concert biz, “There are no bad tours, just bad deals.”

In other concert news, the Rolling Stones issued a statement this week saying that have no plans to tour right now. However, that does not mean they wont have plans to tour tomorrow.

Atlantic Records Group has named its first-even president of Black music Michal Kyser. The Comet intern innocently asked me if there is also a president of White music. Good question.

Bands I love this week: Everest (discovered by Neil Young), the Black Box Revelation and Lucy Schwartz.

Next week: Grammy week!