LONDON - EMI, the music company behind artists including Roxette, Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue, stunned investors this past week by warning of a 20% slide in full-year profits. Shares in the company plunged by 35 percent to 214p, wiping about £900m off the value of the company. At their peak, at the beginning of last year, the shares were worth 799p.


  In a trading update, EMI said its core recorded music business would fall into an operating loss in the first half, blaming a “marked deterioration” in market conditions. The company, which has a global share of 14.1%, said the US and Latin America had been particularly weak. The firm’s market share, it added, should hold steady.
Read more…

After skipping “Real Sugar” as a single release, EMI Australia has finally revealed the release date for the second single from Roxette’s “Room Service” album. “Milk And Toast And Honey”, the ballad already in the record stores in many European countries including the UK, will see daylight on October 29th. The single is going to include 4 different edits of the title track, plus a CD-ROM part with “Milk And Toast And Honey” video.

  (David Di Troia contributed to this article.)

• EMI Australia

The German TV channel will broadcast a short interview with Roxette on the Disney Club’s “Die Fab. 5” today. Disney Club starts in the early morning, but the interview is likely to start at 10:00 CET.

  Editor’s note: Sorry for not being able to publish this article earlier.

So, Roxette launched their Room Service Tour in Munich yesterday evening. According to roxettenews.com, published by the Official Fanclub, Roxette came on stage at 21:15 and played a 20-song set.

  Surprisingly, even Göteborgs Posten’s reporter Johan Lindqvist liked what he saw and heard. Especially he mentions Jonas Åkerlund, who had created a stunning stage show with images displayed on a large silver screen. 4 out of 5 to Roxette from Lindqvist.

  (Mikael Gardh contributed to this article.)

• Gˆteborgs Posten article

Read more…

Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group plans to start issuing CDs in October with software that prevents music from being digitally copied into computer files, Reuters reports. In practice, this means that their CDs won’t be playable in CD-ROM drives making it impossible to encode their contents into MP3 or similar files.

  Other record companies are still testing different copy protection technologies. BMG plans to start using anti-piracy software on promotional CDs in the United States, but at the moment not on CDs for sale to the public. EMI’s representatives were not available for a comment.

• CNET article

Roxette’s European tour (even though EMA still refers to it as a “world tour”) is set to begin today in Munich, Germany. This is their first full-scale tour since Crash! Boom! Bang! world tour ended in 1995.

  Swedish newspapers have published articles on their tour premiere. Aftonbladet has interviewed Per about his and Marie’s families on the tour. Both Per and Marie are taking their kids with them and that’s why the tour is not so intense. “We try to have 2 weeks of work and then a couple of weeks’ break,” says Per.

  Expressen tells that Per has been a little sick lately, but not as sick as on one of the previous tours when he had eaten old French fries and had a stomach ache for a week - just before the tour was set to begin. “I missed the final rehearsal and came to the tour premiere without practising,” says Per.

  Per also tells to Expressen that they are going to play 23 songs. The stage show, designed by director Jonas Åkerlund, will be “bigger and more trendy” than their previous tour sets. Per doesn’t want to reveal anything, but he says that the show will be “more boasting than before, that’s for sure.”

  According to Expressen, both today’s Munich concert and the forthcoming Brussels concert are sold out. The Swedish concerts in Karlstad, Stockholm and Gothenburg are nearing to be sold out with only a couple of hundred tickets left.

• Aftonbladet article
• Expressen article
• Gˆteborgs Posten article

According to EMI Austria and the Official Fanclub, Roxette will release their first DVD on November 5th. The disc, possibly titled “All Videos Ever Made And More…”, will include 40 videos and “most likely 1 documentary.”

A lot of things happened during TDR’s absence. Here’s our round-up:

• Room Service Tour concerts in South Africa, scheduled in late December, were cancelled after tragic events of NYC. “The prospect of going long flights with families under the current circumstances does not feel comfortable and the decision had to be made now,” Per and Marie say on their official web site.
• “Milk And Toast And Honey” single was released in the UK. Amazon UK (for example) is selling it.
• Roxette had a 1-hour live gig at Carlsberg’s promotional party on September 23rd. Only VIP guests were able to take part.
• In an Aftonbladet article, Per and Marie say that they are not interested in the USA anymore. “Room Service” album won’t be released there. They say that family is now more important to them and they’ve tired to the intense travelling that promotion requires.
• According to Expressen, Jonas Åkerlund who is better know as a music video director, is working as an art director for the Room Service Tour. He will be responsible for the visual aspect of the show. Sounds interesting, I would say…
• Famestudios, the new media company partly owned by Per, has had troubles in paying taxes and other fees, reports Hallandsposten. According to their MD Ludvig Werner, things have now changed. He also claims these problems were “more administrative than financial”. Famestudios has designed Roxette’s official web site.

ST. PETERSBURG - As even the tickets to the upcoming shows are colored in a Room Service “style” (red and black colors), it’s a little surprising that the posters which have appeared on the streets of Saint-Petersburg are blue and white.

The Netherlands-based Official Roxette Fanclub has launched a new website dedicated to Roxette’s Room Service Tour. The fanclub is going to co-operate closely with EMA Telstar, the company that organizes the tour. They are also going to provide streaming content together with their partner Tiscali.

• www.RoxetteOnTour.com

Roxette’s support act in Sweden, Finland and Estonia will be a band called The Rasmus, reports Finnish tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.

  The Rasmus is a Finnish rock band who is praised for its powerful performing charisma. The members of the band are young (avg. 21-year-old), but they have been performing together for about 7 years already.

  The band’s latest album was produced by former Roxette guitarist Micke “Nord” Andersson. According to Ilta-Sanomat, he recommended The Rasmus to be Roxette’s support act.

• The Rasmus

Roxette’s “Milk & Toast & Honey” is at #3 on the
German SWR Listener’s chart after staying at #2 for two weeks.
You can vote via eMail ([email protected]) or at www.swr3.de

You’re now reading the all new version of The Daily Roxette. As you can see, we have new graphics, but most of the changes have been done behind the scenes.

  Important: Before you’ll be able to log in, your old user account must be converted for this new version of TDR. Converting is easy and doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes. You’ll also recieve a new password.

  We have to currently monitor the load on the server. This means that it may be necessary to take the site offline for short periods of time. Of course we hope that this won’t be the case.

  If you like or dislike something in The Daily Roxette, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re waiting for all your feedback!

• Convert your user account
• Mobile edition

HELSINKI - EMI Finland reports that Roxette’s album “Joyride” has sold 100,000 copies in Finland and gone double platinum. “Joyride” was released in 1991.

  Record companies’ national trade organization has frequently lowered the limits for achieving gold and platinum records in Finland. For example, “Crash! Boom! Bang!” and other albums released after January 1994 only have to sell 80,000 copies to achieve double platinum. For “Room Service” and Roxette’s forthcoming albums the limit is only 60,000.

• ƒKT ry. (The Finnish National Group of IFPI)