I just landed in New York to a burst of messages about the latest change at EMI on the digital side: Cory Ondrejka twittered late this afternoon that he is leaving: “Thanks EMI for great year and a half, time to return to entrepreneurial roots, last day 21 Aug.” The timing is odd to say the least. Ondrejka only recently became the top digital exec at EMI, EVP of digital marketing, where the current strategy—or at least, the talk—is all about mainstreaming digital. He was promoted in March when his boss, former Google (NSDQ: GOOG) CIO Douglas Merrill, was organized out.  Just a couple of weeks ago, he and EMI announced eight hires and promotions in digital marketing.

But EMI was a very different scene for for the Linden Lab/Second Life co-founder, who joined the music label in June 2008 “to drive innovation around new revenue opportunities and build a world-class engineering team for the company.”

Update: So once I backed up through all my messages, I realized that Ondrejka’s tweet followed Anthony Bruno’s scoop about the move from an internal memo. EMI told him Ondrejka missed his Silicon Valley life and wants to spend more time with his family. For now, Ondrejka’s direct reports will go to Ernesto Schmitt, president of EMI’s central marketing and catalog.