Japan's Toshiba-emi Expects 5% Sales Drop

Toshiba-EMI, along with EMI Music's Asian affiliates, is in the spotlight following EMI's recent announcement that poor results in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to cause a 25-million-pound ($40 million) operating loss for the current year (Billboard, Feb. 7).
The label's sales in Japan for the year ending March 1998 are expected to be 5% down from the 84.3 billion yen ($669.1 million at current rates) it scored the previous year, marking the first time in more than 10 years that Toshiba-EMI's sales have not risen year on year.
Label sources say the company is in a period of transition that, they contend, will end once the corporate reorganization begun last year is finished and a new generation of domestic acts start moving large amounts of product.
While Toshiba-EMI's woes reflect the general malaise affecting the Japanese industry (see story, page 1), the label has been hard hit by the loss of key domestic artists like Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi and Koji Kikkawa, as well as several domestic A&R personnel, to other labels.
One of the label's biggest acts, singer/songwriter Yumi Matsutoya, sold a disappointing 1.35 million copies of her February 1997 release, 'Cowgirl Dreamin'.' That, according to company sources, was about 70% of what the label had hoped to sell.
Another flagship Japanese act, Dreams Come True, which was signed to Virgin Records America in August in a blaze of publicity, sold just 1.4 million copies of 'Sing Or Die,' its first album for Toshiba-EMI. Sony's decision to release a Dreams Come True greatest-hits album (which has so far sold 2.5 million copies) only a few weeks before the act's Toshiba-EMI debut certainly undermined the impact of 'Sing Or Die.'
One label source says Toshiba-EMI's big acts haven't been selling as much as the company would like. But there's more concern about where the next generation of acts is coming from.
The label expects promising newcomers like vocalists Sakura and Mitsuhiro Oikawa and rock band Laputa to boost its fortunes over the next couple of months. The feeling at Toshiba-EMI, says the source, is that there are a lot of reasons to be positive about 1998, compared with 1997.
On the international front, in 1997 there were no spectacular success stories like Shampoo and Me & My, which were huge hits for Toshiba-EMI in the past few years. The label has been achieving solid results, however, with Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Chumbawamba, and Spice Girls.
On Feb. 2, Toshiba-EMI announced that Makoto Kumai and Kiyotsugu Kuroda would be appointed as executive GMs of the EMI and Virgin divisions, respectively, effective Feb. 16. The moves follow the company's reorganization into Virgin, EMI, and strategic marketing divisions and the appointment of Masaaki Saito as company president last year. Saito is the first Toshiba-EMI president to have begun his career at the label instead of at joint-venture partner Toshiba.
On the manufacturing front, the company is beginning to feel the positive effects of its recent switchover to Swedish-made Toolex-Alfa CD manufacturing machines at its Gotemba plant southwest of Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Peter Buckleigh has retired from his position as EMI Music's resident director in Japan, although he will continue as a member of Toshiba-EMI's board of directors. For the rest of 1998 at least, Buckleigh will divide his time evenly between Tokyo and his home in New Zealand.
There are no plans to appoint a new resident director in place of Buckleigh. Instead, Toshiba-EMI will bring in specialists from overseas on a regular basis to provide expertise on specific subjects as needed.

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