NEW YORK - CDs priced at $9.99 may soon be a standard offer at music stores as U.S. retailers slash prices in bid to battle the scourge of online music piracy.

  “It looks like it will be another year of flat CD sales and I think to some degree that’s got to be attributed to the fact that there’s so much music available online,” Tom Adams, president of consulting firm Adams Media Research said.

“I also think (the price cutting) is also as much to do with the fact that the economy is terrible and holiday sales were off overall,” he told Reuters.

  The situation in the U.S. is similar in most other markets, and this same development is expected to affect retail prices worldwide. Read more…

NEW YORK - In a move that undoubtedly will confound people who want to play by the rules, music consumers will be paying twice if they want to listen to their music on their stereo and on their computer. And yes, EMI is involved.

  Today, Universal became the first label to sell copy-protected CDs with the release of its soundtrack “Fast & Furious.” This CD will keep people from listening to their music on a computer or other digital device.

  Essentially, consumers will be required to pay once for a physical CD and once for the digital music file. Fear of piracy cutting into retail sales is the major record labels’ justification for restricting how people can listen to the music they buy. The goal is to keep people from turning individual songs into the MP3 format. Read more…

The company behind the music site Mr. Edmundo has filed for bankruptcy according to a report in the Halmstad-based newspaper Hallandsposten. Mr. Edmundo provided exclusive streaming content, often featuring Roxette: a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of TCOTH video and two songs from Roxette’s Stockholm showcase.

  Per was one of the primary shareholders in the company, called People’s Front of Streaming Video AB. Along with Per, Henrik Schyffert, Thomas Di Leva and Jonas Åkerlund invested a total of 1.5 million SEK (140,300 USD) in the company less than a year ago. Per himself invested 500,000 SEK (46,700 USD). The company hoped that celebrities would help them to sell their content to web portals and TV companies, but even that didn’t seem to help.

  Mr. Edmundo’s website is still online, but their streaming video doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.

• Hallandsposten article
• Mr Edmundo

LONDON - EMI Group reported a wider loss in the six-month period ending September 30th compared to the same period a year ago. The company says that conditions in the worldwide music industry went from bad to worse. According to news agency AP, EMI had a net loss of 74.5 million USD compared to 39.3 million USD a year earlier. Revenues fell to 1.53 billion USD from 1.63 billion USD. EMI has 70 labels and 1,500 artists, including Roxette.

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…

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

NEW YORK - Recording industry trade magazine Billboard published a front page article in last week’s edition in which they wrote about the current state of pop music in Sweden - with the focus being on music exports - and stated that there were no obvious candidates ready to follow in the footsteps of ABBA, Roxette, Ace of Base, and the Cardigans.

  Artists mentioned as having potential included Infinite Mass, Daniel Lemma, Backyard Babies, Lisa Miskovsky, Nina Persson and Titiyo.

  Billboard’s story was picked up in today’s issue of the Swedish newspaper Expressen.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Check back later for a more complete version of this story.

• Expressen’s article (In Swedish - with photo montage)
• Billboard (not a direct link to an article)

The planned merger of EMI, the world’s third largest music company, and Bertelsmann’s BMG has been scrapped. The deal was scuttled today in London after it became clear that regulatory hurdles were too high to clear. The merger would have created the world’s largest music company.

  EMI, whose artists include Roxette, Mariah Carey and the Beatles, reportedly would have had to shed various portions of their company before being allowed to acquire BMG. BMG’s artists include David Bowie and Whitney Houston. Read more…

In a lengthy interview published in Saturday’s Dagens Industri, Per Öqvist asked the following question of Tomas Johansson, who heads EMA Telstar (worldwide booking agents for Roxette):

  Roxette has had three #1’s and a #2 on the American Billboard list. How can you get them to hit in the USA one more time?

  “I’m going to talk with my owners that have 1,200 radio stations across the USA and ask them to play the new record,” Johansson replied. “It’s absolutely good enough to hit in the USA, it only depends on the right launch.”

  Tomas Johansson, who was called the “rock watchman” in the story’s headline, is talking about Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel, headquarted in Texas, acquired New York-based SFX Entertainment last year, the world’s largest promoter and producer of live entertainment events, including concerts, theatre and sporting events. SFX, in turn, had recently purchased EMA Telstar in Sweden.

  SFX owns 120 live entertainment venues in 31 of the top 50 worldwide markets, including 16 owned and operated amphitheaters in the top 10 markets.

  The opportunities for synergies among all these Clear Channel divisions are just beginning to be exploited, and Johansson intends to use this leverage on behalf of Roxette. He described himself in the article as being stubborn, goal-oriented and quick.

  Reaching over 110 million listeners in the U.S. every week, Clear Channel has stations taking to the airwaves in all 50 states including 47 of top 50 markets.

Photo ©2001 Dagens Industri. Used with permission.

• Dagens Industri article (In Swedish)
• EMA Telstar (In Swedish)
• Clear Channel Communications