Profits Up At EMI Music, Despite Lost Ground In U.S.

Pre-tax profits at EMI Group increased 8.1% in the year to March 31, to 245.4 million ($362.8 million), despite its key Recorded Music division losing market share in the U.S. Total revenues were 2.4 billion ($3.5 billion), up 0.5% from the previous year. Recorded Music posted 7.1% gains in operating profits to 195.1 million ($288.3 million), as revenues fell 1.2% to 2 billion ($3 billion). The division was spurred by 5.1% market growth in Japan, with additional increases in Europe, Latin America, and the rest of Asia. However, market share in the U.S. declined to 9%. Says EMI Recorded Music worldwide president/CEO Ken Berry, "Despite the fact that we lost three points of market share in the U.S., it has hardly affected our sales line year on year at all, which shows our strength." He adds, "It's not satisfying for me to see the market share down so much, but it doesn't mean that I don't have a lot of confidence about the future."
--Lars Brandle and Gordon Masson, London


Greene, Rosen To Testify At Work-For-Hire Hearings

The House Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property has released the witness list of those who will testify at its hearing tomorrow on the new work-for-hire law. The artist community will be represented by Recording Academy president/CEO Michael Greene, artist Sheryl Crow, and Marcie Hamilton, a professor from the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Recording industry witnesses are RIAA president/CEO Hilary Rosen and Paul Goldstein, a Stanford University law professor. U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters will testify as a neutral party. Artists contend that the law robs them of their right to reclaim their masters from record companies. The RIAA, which had the provision inserted at the end of last session without hearings, maintains that recordings have always been treated as works for hire and that the law is simply a technical change. ASCAP president and chairman Marilyn Bergman, speaking at the performing rights organization's Pop Awards dinner on Monday, implored songwriters and publishers to fight the law. Calling it "terribly wrong" and a "travesty," she said a repeal should be enacted quickly.
--Bill Holland, Washington, D.C.; Melinda Newman, L.A.


Britney Scores Second Best SoundScan Week

With an opening stanza of 1.3 million units, Britney Spears' album, "Oops! ... I Did It Again," scores the second largest sales week in SoundScan history. "Oops" trails only 'N Sync's "No Strings Attached," which sold 2.4 million units during its first frame. With Backstreet Boys' "Millennium" in third, having sold 1.13 million units in its first week a year ago, Jive Records now owns the three largest sales weeks since Billboard adopted SoundScan data in 1991.
--Geoff Mayfield, L.A.


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