Vivendi to buy BMG
p2pnet.net News:- The members of the Big Four Organized Music cartel are playing musical chairs.
Vivendi’s Universal Music, the world’s largest seller of recorded music, is to buy BMG Music Publishing for 1.63 billion euros ($2.1 billion)..
"German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, BMG Music Publishing’s parent company, also said on Wednesday it would pay Vivendi $60 million to settle litigation related to financing it once provided to file-sharing service Napster," says Reuters.
Way back, there was talk of a BMG – Warner Music merger and on this new development, "There is a strange aura," the story has an anonymous source saying.
"This will be tricky."
Meanwhile, the deal is still subject to anti-trust clearance in Europe and the US, "but a spokesman for Bertelsmann said the company is confident it will obtain regulatory approval," says Forbes, adding:
"Bertelsmann declined to comment on a likely closing date for the transaction, saying only it expects to get paid before the end of the year."
Also See:
Reuters – Vivendi to buy BMG, settles Napster claims, September 6, 2006
Forbes – ROUNDUP Bertelsmann sells BMG Music Publishing to Vivendi for 1.63 bln eur, September 6, 2006
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September 6th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
“…the deal is still subject to anti-trust clearance in Europe and the US…”
If there are not already huge, serious anti-trust issues with the current corporate structure of “big music” why bother? Just let the most ruthless, biggest shark win. We’ll have one “major label” with no other choices. Where’s the problem?
September 6th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
My first thought was that Sony felt the conflict of interest being in the “content” industry as well as the ICT hardware business, realizing that it should get out of the content industry.
Even if they get rid of BMG they still have television and motion picture studios — which are no better than the recording industry in attacking IT property rights.
September 6th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
“is to buy BMG Music Publishing for 1.63 billion euros ($2.1 billion)”
This is how it works out when record company music publishing division are sold. at least most of the time but not necessarily this time:
1. Songwriters were told that to get their songs included in the record label’ records, they should assign the rights to the songs to the music publishing arm (the publisher) of the record company corporation through a legal jargon contract (trap may be a better word). Allegedly the publisher will promote and explot the songs and keep a part of the royalties and pay the rest to the songwriter.
2. The publisher then sells the assignments to another corporation, which may be illegal for several reasons: 1. The part of the contract that allows the publisher to sell the assignments to a third party may be illegal if the songwriter has no say in the transaction. After all the songs could wind up being administered by a new owner that knows nothing about the business of music publishing (exploiting songs) or who is a thief that pays royalties to no one or pays the wrong amounts or is located in another country, meaning outside the reach of local courts for the settlement of a contract dispute. 2. The profits from the sale are not shared with the songwriters.
Actually it is a sweet scam. The publisher gets out of their contractual responsiblity to work for the songwriter by publishing, promoting and exploit the songs, collect royalties and pay the songwriter’s royalties, while making a big sales bang, and does not have to share (pay) anything to the songwriter. The only winner is the publisher.
So, if you are a songwriter and gave songs to BMG for managing, give BMG publishing a call and ask a few hard questions, including how much is there for you, the songwriter, from the deal with Vivendi.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 6th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Hell what difference does it make anyway? They have been price fixing for ever anyway.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Sony has nothing to do with the deal.
What is being sold is the music publishing division of Bertelsmann AG., not BMG Records, which is now part of Sony-BMG.
September 7th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Too are confused the songwriters artists who are given a bunch of documents to sign by the label guys, not realizing that there is a publishing “deal” being made at the same time by which they loose (they are later told) all the rights to their songs.
Then the songwriter-artists goes about town to celebrate the getting signed by a big record company. Foolishness has never seen such a low point.
Then at some time the publisher will unload the songs for a killing, and the artist songwriter will not even know what hit them nor will they see a cent of the killing.
And where are the so called songwriter organizations?
They are counting the money the songwriter artist will never see.
And who tells the songwriters that the selling of their songs to another publisher without their explicit, written authorizationis a violation of the publishing contract because if a publisher agreed to promote/exploit the songs, they can no longer do it if they passed the songs to another publisher (who may operate in another legal jurisdiction, a legal complication when royalties are not paid by the new publisher)? No one is doing it.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
September 9th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
In the end, of course, they are all the same company – movies, gadgets, mucis, etc, etc
September 9th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
In the end also they shaft the same ones, the music fan customers, culture, artists and songwriters, amen.
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