Vivendi buys BMG Music Publishing
p2pnet.net news:- European Union regulators have given the official green light to Big 4 music cartel member Vivendi Universal to buy BMG Music Publishing for about for about $2.09 billion.
The deal will result in the creation the world’s largest music publishing company.
“The EU warned, however, that its ’serious doubts’ about the deal’s effect on online music were soothed only by the companies’ plan to sell the rights to some hits from the ’80s and ’90s by artists,” says Associated Press.
In the wings is other news that another Big 4 company, Britain’s EMI, has just been bought for $4.7 billion by a European private venture company.
“With a 22 percent market share, it will scrape ahead of current market leader EMI Group PLC,” says the story.
“EU approval was the last hurdle for the deal, which Universal said would close shortly.”
However, this new deal has nothing to do with the merger of the Sony BMG music units more than two years and which the EU is currently re-examining, adds AP.
Also See:
Associated Press – E.U. Clears Universal, BMG Music Deal, May 22, 2007
$4.7 billion – EMI sold for $4.7 billion, May 21, 2007
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May 23rd, 2007 at 11:55 am
An isue that arises is how much of the sale price will go to the songwriters that gave the music to BMG to “publish” and split the profits (with the songwriter). I believe ALL of the sale price should go to the songwriter. If BMG wants to leave the publishing business, they should not profit from it, as that is not the deal the made with songwriters.
I believe that this issue has never been raised and I know of no claim for a share of a song’s sale price (100 percent pofit for BMG?) by a songwriter.
Maybe songwriters have never met a smart lawyer!
Another issue is if songwriters need to authorize their publisher to sell what is in effect an obligation by the publisher to the songwriter (to exploit their music) to another party, who, by the way may have no experience exploting music or worse, who may have a reputation of not paying due royalties to songwriter or who may operate in a different country.
What I have described above is happening all the time and no one questions the legality of reselling song assignments to third party publishers that have a lousy reputation and even located in another country, when the logical thing is that if a publisher wants to leave the publishing business, they should simply return the rights to the songwriters so these can contract whatever publisher they choose or become independent publishers themselves.
Here is what I may ask for if I had a publisher and that publisher wanted to sell my music to another publisher which I qualified as a good one that resides in my own country and one with succesful experience in marketing my type of music: “Sell the music but give me all the sale money”. The reason is that the original assignment meant that the publisher was to make money from the exploitation of the music, not from the sale of it to a third party.
BTW, dealing with publisher that reside in foreign contries is a legal nightmere.
I guss a bunch of German songwriters will now have their songs managed from now on by some foreigner who is not interestied in exploiting german songs composed by a songwriter the foreigner has no idea who is. A terrible situation.
Even though I have nothing negatibe to say about Vivendi, who could turn out to be a better publisher than BMG, the whole thing smacks of taking advantage of sonwriter’s legal naiveness and legal representation weakness.
May 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am
I gather that the poster thinks the whole thing is a scam against songwriters and the seller is selling rights it does not own for the purpose of selling them, that those rights belong the songwriters that.
Would that not have have been detected by the European Union regulators who approved the deal?
May 26th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Being that BMG and Vivendi are controlling RIAA members, this is a case of RIAA copyright infringement.
Whose rights have been infringed? The songwriter rights who are the legal beneficial owners of whatever rights they assigned to the publisher BMG.
Who are the infringers? BMG and Vivendi.
This is why they go after kids that share music with such vigor. To hide their own real large scale infringements.
I suggest that this be a cause for a full fledged investigative story by p2pnet and others. The worst copyright infringers should be exposed for what they are.