Building a Bigger Star; With the music business flagging, industry execs are looking for European acts that have real global appeal.

Byline: Tara Pepper

Zucchero--a.k.a. Adelmo Fornaciari--may be Italian, but he is well on his way to becoming part of a rare musical breed: the European rock star. Though his biggest fan base remains at home, his gravelly blues style has won him a following around the region, especially in France and Germany. Now his latest album, "Zu Co," is being released in six different editions--Italian, Spanish, French, Australian, Latin American and an "international" version--to capitalize on this popularity and turn him into a true global act. Each has been tweaked to appeal to a local audience; the French album, for instance, includes a duet with Gallic crooner Johnny Hallyday, while Australia's features Tina Arena.

Max Hole, senior vice president of marketing and A&R at Universal Music International, masterminded the effort, working with the label's Italian arm and Zucchero himself to create music with broad allure. That required less Italian rock and more romantic ballads. It also meant a snazzy debut: Zucchero launched the album at a well-publicized concert at London's Royal Albert Hall, where many of his duet partners--including Pavarotti, Eric Clapton and the Cranberries's Dolores O'Riordan--joined him on stage. The show was recorded for TV networks across Europe, giving him maximum exposure and allowing him to "short circuit the system," says Hole.

That system is badly in need of a jolt. Globally, record sales have been falling for the past four years, down 7.6 percent in 2003. A June report from Pricewaterhouse-Coopers predicted continued decline until 2006--in part due to illegal downloading. "The only chance to tackle this is to try to increase our audience by entering foreign markets," says Peter James, managing director of German Sounds, an organization set up last winter to promote German music abroad.

Over the past five years, music has become increasingly localized. In the world's biggest music markets--the United States, Japan, Britain and France--homegrown bands capture the lion's share of sales: 93 percent of music sold in the United States in 2002 was by local artists, as was 74 percent in Japan and more than half across Europe. Indeed, relatively few European artists manage to break into the charts outside their home country. Those that do are mostly Anglo-American: this year Norah Jones, the Fugees, Dido and George Michael topped the monthly list of European best sellers compiled by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the industry trade group. "Although there's a European Community, people are not ...