July 20, 2004
EU Clears the Way for Merger of Sony Music & Bertelsmann
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European Commission regulators have cleared a merger between the music businesses of Japanese electronics group Sony and German media company Bertelsmann.
EU regulators opened an inquiry into the deal between Sony's music arm and Bertelsmann's music business BMG in February on concerns that a combined group would dominate the market.
If the merger goes ahead, the market will be carved up between four instead of five majors: Vivendi's Universal, the newly-created SonyBMG, Warner and EMI. Together they would share around 80 percent of European recorded music sales.
The European and US competition authorities have run parallel investigations into the merger, which will create the world's largest music company by market share according to 2003 figures.
The merger will bring together Sony stars such as Barbara Streisand and Beyonce and BMG stars, including Elvis Presley and Christina Aguilera.
The Japanese and German parent groups argue that their businesses need to join forces to tackle the crisis in the global music industry faced with both pirate CDs and an explosion of illegal music downloading.
At least Sony got its new music service and MP3 player to market a few weeks ago, or its biggest competitor would be the iPod/iTunes platform. Wait a second... it already is!
- Arik
Posted by Arik Johnson at July 20, 2004 01:10 PM | TrackBack
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