Billionaire Len Blavatnik, won the bid to buy Warner Music for $3.3billion
Some major shifts are happening as we speak to the big 4 in the music industry…two of them, Warner and EMI, where for sale to the highest bidder…and Warner was just acquired by billionare Len Blavatnik.
Now British owned EMI is up for grabs and expected to go for sale later this year…And everyone is fighting hard to get their hands on it.
It’s good to finally see some change, in this broken label driven music industry.
The Mail:
The music industry is still dominated by the top four major corporate labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI. Within each lies a complex web of smaller companies and labels.
At number one Universal is currently 100 per cent owned by French media company Vivendi SA.
But if a deal went through with Warner, who from January 1 to May 1 had a 19.7 per cent of the U.S. music market according to Nielsen, and EMI, who had a 9.2 per cent share, they could be neck and neck with their rival in the U.S. Universal Music Group’s share was 27.9 per cent and Sony 30.5 per cent.
EMI has had a troublesome time over the past few years. Its British market share price fell to 9 per cent from 16 per cent and the company announced losses of £260million in 2007. It was then bought by Terra Firma Capital Partners for £4.2billion. CEO Guy Hands got to work on plans to cut between 1,500 to 2,000 jobs in order to reduce costs. UK Chief Executive Tony Wadsworth left as a result after 25 years at the company. It also haemorrhaged several key artists including Radiohead, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones.
In February last year the group reported pre-tax losses of £1.75billion and in February this year Citigroup took 100 per cent ownership of EMI from Terra Firma after they defaulted on loans.
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