Fox's Roger Friedman is reporting that nerd-employing music conglomerate EMI has just axed the heads of Capitol and Virgin Records (president Lee Trink and CEO Jason Flom, respectively) and neither will be replaced because Guy Hands and his partners at Terra Firma, the private-equity company that bought EMI last year, "don't believe in label presidents."

This comes shortly before next week's release of the shareholder-anticipated Coldplay album Viva La Vida, so Friedman is convinced that it's completely crazy (and industry analyst Perez Hilton agrees). But we're not yet discounting the possibility that it just might be crazy enough to work. What part of the promotional strategy for the new Coldplay album hasn't already been in place for months (1. Send it to stores. 2. Beg Chris Martin to write more songs like "Yellow" for his next album)? And, moving forward, can't geeky EMI president (and former Googler!) Doug Merrill just build robots to dictate company policy? We see no reason why not.

Coldplay, Beatles Lose Leader [Fox News]