Piracy 'a great idea'
2003-01-19 13:44
Cannes, France - Pop sensation Robbie Williams said he believes music piracy, which costs the record industry millions of dollars every year, is a great idea.
"I think it's great, really I do. There is nothing no one can do about it. I am sure my record label would hate me saying it, and my manager and my accountants," Williams said on Saturday at the MIDEM music trade fair here.
Williams, whose contract with EMI is worth a reported $126m, said he had investigated the issue of music piracy before renegotiating his new deal with the record company last year.
"I went and saw all the labels and asked: 'What are you going to do about it?' And I heard a lot of hot air. The heads of the record labels don't know what to do about it."
Williams' last album Escapology has sold five million copies since its release on November 18, but EMI is reported to believe it will only make a profit when some 18 million copies are sold.
Currently, record companies fear that some 800 million bootlegged records are sold annually, compared with the industry's total legal sales of 2.4 billion discs in 2001.
Meanwhile, the industry is also faced with the new challenge of the spread of music that can be downloaded free of charge from the internet.
Total sales for the music industry fell by nine percent last year to $30.3 billion. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA