Will Warner Save Roxette?

Per Gessle has for a long time predicted the crisis.
America's EMI-division has during a big period of the 90's been a record company without guidance.
"EMI is a record company in crisis", Gessle said to me a couple of weeks ago.
In the end it was so bad that one of the companies' European golden calves, Roxette, was not even released in the USA.

Of course Per was furious.
He delivered songs which with the right launching had big possibilities to climb on the USA list. But the government in the Capitol Tower by Sunset Strip in Hollywood ignored him.
Now it can get better.
When Time-Warner and EMI have become one and created the world's most powerful record companies, Roxette will probably get out their music in the USA.

No one believed them

If not Gessle already had got tired and chosen to go through Sony or Universal, two companies he's been negotiating with what concerns Roxette's latest studio-album.
I guess that the Warner Mafia in Burbank understands Roxette's hit potential.
When you look at BMG:s launching of Eurythmics' comeback-album on the American market you understand that Gessle's sitting and wondering what the matter is.
Accordingly it's not only about the artistic content. You have to have people that believe in what you do.
On American EMI there was obviously no one that believed in Roxette.

Tragic development

When the record company-world shrinks to four companies it's not really what you wished for.
The development is tragic but maybe the only way out of the digital age where it's more and more common to shop and download new music on the Net.
The record companies' distribution machine is not as interesting as before.
The time when you bought records by looking on what record label that was the consignor is gone.
In the 70's you could buy everything where it said Asylum because then you knew that you would get music which fitted in the remaining collection with Eagles, Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. Today the record companies have lost their aesthetic identity.

Goes through the Internet?

Roxette can basically be released on any record label. It's just a question of finding someone who handles the marketing.
Gessle himself had in mind to make use of the Net.
The artist gets control over his work of art and at the same time makes more money.
But right now I think Gessle chooses the old way. At least on the next album.

Olle Berggren
Kvällsposten
from 25 January 2000
Translated by Martina Karlsson

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