Sony And BMG To Merge - Record Label Consolidation Begins
from the here-it-comes... dept
As the big five established record labels have continued to struggle with the new digital world and all of the potential business models they prefer to ignore, it's been no surprise that they've felt lost. Thus, the rumors of mergers among the labels have been heating up over the past few months. It looks like the race to merge has begun as the NY Post is reporting that Sony Music and BMG will merge. This follows a recent failed attempt to sell BMG to Warner Music and continued talks to merge EMI with Warner. Of course, big music label mergers in the past (EMI with BMG and Warner with EMI) have been stopped by regulators, but this time people think regulators are more open to the idea. Now, here's the tricky part: chances are only one such merger will go through. So, if BMG/Sony makes it out the door first, then it may kill off the plans of Warner and EMI. Meanwhile, they'll all continue to miss any opportunity to actually embrace new business models, but that's a story for another post.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Record Club
[ link to this | view in chronology ]