EMI pays price of a fallen angel

Music giant EMI was counting the £200 million cost of Robbie Williams’s ego and the digital revolution yesterday as it revealed an extraordinary slump in profits. The label, which said sales for 2006 are likely to be 10 per cent lower than predicted, was immediately accused of being a dinosaur that had failed to adapt quickly enough to the era of digital music.

But the slump, which leaves EMI looking to make £110 million annual savings, is equally a result of the former Take That star’s fall from grace. Williams won the biggest deal in British pop history when he signed to EMI for £80 million in 2002. At the time he was selling millions of albums and producing era-defining songs, including Angels and Millennium.

However, when EMI needed him most, in the second half of last year, he released Rudebox, an album written by the singer and his band, and described most kindly as peculiar. Other critics were much more cruel and it bombed in the charts. Rudebox came after Williams had fallen out with a series of song writers and had had problems with drugs and depression. In the run up to Christmas, the album was selling just 38,000 copies a week, against 171,000 for his previous record, Intensive Care, which itself sold badly in relation to earlier efforts.

Robert Sandall, a music writer, said: “Robbie is a good performer and a decent singer but he is no musician. He needs support. To write an album by himself was pure hubris and EMI are now counting the cost.” EMI’s other big hopes have also under-performed. Most surprising has been poor sales of Love, the George Martin-remixed Beatles album. “It has never been more the case that the big record companies are sustained almost solely by their big stars,” said Mr Sandall. “For EMI, in the second half of last year, big stars meant Robbie Williams and the Beatles. Neither lived up to expectations (more here…)
T. Hall / telegraph.co.uk

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