THE EMI record label yesterday pinned its financial future on Robbie Williams after the singer agreed to sign the biggest recording contract ever offered to a British star.
In a unique deal that reflects the changing face of the music industry, Williams will be paid £80 million to produce four albums for the label but will hand back to EMI some of the profits he makes from concert tours, merchandising and TV.
The gl
obal slump in record sales has particularly hurt EMI, with the label issuing two profits warnings and slipping out of the FTSE 100 index of leading companies in recent months.
But investors reacted warily to the unusual deal offered to Williams last night, with the company’s share price closing slightly lower following formal announcement of the contract.
Williams, 28, said he was delighted to sign the agreement with EMI, which has guided his career since he left the boy band Take That. He refused to comment on the value of the contract but admitted: "I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams."
EMI described the deal with Williams as a "multi-platform" contract, which means the company will take a share of the profits from his commercial activities outside record sales. It is second only in value to the colossal £623 million deal offered to Michael Jackson by Sony in 1991.
Traditionally, singers and bands recoup a very small percentage of their record sales and make their fortunes from gathering in the profits from concert tours, merchandising, publishing rights and television appearances.
With the British Phonographic Association announcing UK record sales were down 15.4 per cent earlier this year and EMI suffering a 40 per cent fall in profits, record labels have looked for other ways to cash in on their artists.
Under the deal, EMI will be given a slice of the profits from the other areas of his career. In return, he has greater artistic control over his records and an undertaking that EMI will work to help him break into the US market, where he has yet to make an impact.
Williams, who has sold almost ten million albums in the UK as a solo artist and has been awarded an unequalled 13 Brit Awards, has already recorded his next album, which is called Escapology.
EMI had been in a bidding war with four other major labels for his signature after his last deal with them expired earlier this year. Williams was offered £10 million up front and a further £15 million on release of the first album. The remaining £55 million is to be divided over the following three albums.
It is a risky strategy for EMI. In April 2001, it signed a five-album deal with the US singer Mariah Carey worth £70 million but, when her first release, Glitter, flopped in the charts, the company was forced to buy themselves out of the contract, paying Carey £20 million.
Williams is considered a safer bet, despite being in his late-twenties and no longer appealing to the pre-teen market which makes up the largest section of the record-buying public. His last bestselling album was the big-band compilation, Swing When You’re Winning, which showed he was capable of appealing to an older market.
Tony Wadsworth, the head of EMI, said Williams’s next album was "undoubtedly his best album yet". He added: "There are only a handful of artists in the world that could achieve this level of ownership and control of their own careers and record companies that could make it work."
