The European Commission announced today that it has approved Universal Music Group’s acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings, with the condition that Universal sells off Downtown’s royalty accounting platform Curve.
The decision follows a concerted campaign by the independent music sector - led by IMPALA, the pan-European trade body representing over 6000 independent music companies - that forced the deal into a level of regulatory scrutiny reserved for a tiny fraction of corporate mergers. That was, in itself, a remarkable result, but, says IMPALA Executive Chair Helen Smith, the EC’s “final outcome falls short”.
Smith warns that IMPALA will “review the decision with forensic precision and see what our next steps are”, adding that “it is difficult to see how this could be good for culture in Europe” - a consideration that carries particular weight at a time when geopolitical tensions are pushing European sovereignty up the political agenda - something IMPALA covered in its recent report, ‘Powering An Independent And Culturally Diverse European Music Ecosystem’.
The Downtown deal was referred to the Commission by the Dutch competition regulator under the ‘Article 22 mechanism’, joined by Austria, after IMPALA engaged with multiple national authorities. Over 200 industry figures signed an open letter urging the Commission to block the deal. A ‘100 Voices’ campaign launched in October featured testimonies from indie representatives across Europe.
The Commission opened an in-depth ‘Phase II investigation’ - something that only happens in a fraction of notified mergers, just one percent - and ultimately issued a Statement Of Objections, formally setting out its view that the deal as proposed would harm competition.
That forced Universal to offer structural concessions in order to proceed. Of the other two Phase II decisions issued by the EC in 2025, both were cleared without remedies.
Universal/Downtown was different. That is a direct result of IMPALA’s campaign - and proof of what a pan-European trade body can do when it coordinates across national regulators, mobilises hundreds of industry voices, and sustains an advocacy effort for fourteen months against a company with the resources of Universal.
Why does consolidation in the recorded music sector matter? Because, argues IMPALA, the independent sector is the engine of musical diversity. Independent labels take risks on new artists, niche genres and culturally significant music that the majors often will not.
When the infrastructure those labels depend on - distribution, data, rights administration - is absorbed into a major-label competitor, it gets harder for independent music to reach audiences. Fewer independent routes to market means less competition, less diversity and ultimately less choice for listeners.
The Commission says the deal won’t significantly shift Universal’s negotiating position with streaming platforms, and that combined market shares “remain moderate”.
But in 2022, the UK Competition And Markets Authority published the most detailed public examination of how major-label negotiating power actually works. Its final report on music streaming, based on a market study that included direct examination of the licensing agreements between majors and streaming platforms, found that the majors’ power doesn’t come from market share at all.
It comes from contractual clauses in the streaming service deals that independent labels don’t have, operating behind NDAs that the wider industry cannot see. IMPALA’s statement today, and key disclosures contained within Spotify’s most recent annual report published earlier this week, suggest the Commission may not have been asking the right questions.
As Smith makes clear, today’s outcome from the European Commission’s investigation falls well short of what the independent sector sought.
The Commission’s concerns ultimately narrowed to a single issue: data. Specifically, the risk that Universal could gain access to commercially sensitive information about rival labels stored on Downtown’s Curve royalty accounting platform. Universal offered to sell Curve. The Commission accepted that proposal.
The broader concerns about infrastructure control, market access and the independent sector’s ability to compete - concerns that IMPALA and the wider independent community had placed at the centre of their case - were not addressed by the remedy.
“We completely agree with Commissioner Dombrovskis who says that ‘the music industry plays an important role in bringing artists’ creations to audiences”, says Smith, adding “it is essential to uphold the availability of diverse service providers for consumers’”. A data-focused remedy does not touch any of that.
The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks, bringing Downtown’s FUGA distribution network, CD Baby self-serve platform, Songtrust publishing administration service, and more than four million creator relationships under the control of Universal via its Virgin Music Group artist and label services subsidiary.
Universal has leaned heavily on the Virgin brand throughout - positioning the deal not as a major-label gobbling up a competitor serving an indie clientbase, but rather as an investment in independent music infrastructure, led by the supposedly independent minded, but entirely major owned, Virgin Music business
When the deal was announced in December 2024, Universal said Virgin and Downtown together would “offer the independent music community a dynamic and innovative global infrastructure”.
The independent sector saw it rather differently. Martin Mills, founder and chair of Beggars Group, described the Virgin framing as “another step on the road of UMG’s pretence to be the independents’ fairy godmother”, warning, “there’s a wolf under that cape”.
IMPALA’s Helen Smith called it “a huge market share grab by UMG”. However Virgin’s brand is positioned, the corporate reality is straightforward - its artists’ streams flow through Universal’s licensing agreements, its catalogue counts towards Universal’s market share, earnings, negotiating clout and its power. And Virgin’s data is Universal’s data.
In the eyes of the European Commission, the fact that a significant chunk of the independent sector’s infrastructure will fall under the auspices of the biggest of the major labels is not a significant concern.
“The music industry plays an important role in bringing artists’’ creations to audiences, and it is “essential to uphold the availability of diverse service providers for consumers”, says Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. “Our in-depth investigation confirmed that a large number of companies will continue to offer their distribution services to European music labels and artists”.
Of the entire Downtown ‘infrastructure stack’ - FUGA, CD Baby, Songtrust, and more - the only part the Commission concluded presented a competition concern was Curve. By requiring the divestment of Curve, we are taking a decisive step to protect sensitive data and prevent it from being controlled by a large competitor”, Dombrovskis added.
For IMPALA, the matter is far from settled. Smith acknowledges the Commission’s effort, saying, “The EC is sending a clear message about the risks of expansionist policies in music”, but makes clear IMPALA considers the process unfinished. The trade body will assess the full decision when published “to see what further action may be needed to correct any errors”, and is clear that its concerns go beyond the data question the Commission chose to address.
“IMPALA consistently set out that this case is not just about data”, its statement reads. “Data concerns of course extend beyond Curve and we will need to examine the Commission’s decision in this regard”. Smith adds that IMPALA expects “regulators to be on the look out for any abuse or dysfunction in terms of streaming revenue, cultural diversity, and the freedom of labels to move if they wish to retain independent distribution”.
IMPALA is also calling on Universal to facilitate “an express transition system, free from penalties and exit fees, or obstruction or delays, or incentives to stay, for companies and artists who wish to retain independence in their supply chain”, by moving their business away from Downtown. IMPALA President Francesca Trainini puts it more directly, “If the EC believes labels are able to move, then it has to make sure it is a market reality”.
Birte Wiemann of Cargo Records Germany places the decision in a broader political context. “Only yesterday, at the ‘informal retreat’ in Belgium, European leaders discussed bolstering competitiveness for the European economy in the face of US and Chinese dominance,” she says.
“The UMG/Downtown case fits neatly into this narrative. While it is also about data insights and individual assets, the much larger point is free choice and market access for European independents outside of multinational, major structures”. Wiemann acknowledges the Commission’s work - “especially its Phase II thoroughness and scrutiny” - but adds that “the outcome of this particular case must remain an immense disappointment for all independents”.
“Once again IMPALA has demonstrated that any entities planning consolidation need to expect full scrutiny and regulator appetite to make full use of what they have in their toolkit”, says Martin Mills. “The unprecedented speaking out we have seen in the independent sector sends a clear message that the concerns are real, that they are global as well as European and that they are not going away”.
“IMPALA’s work here makes market-bending acquisitions like this one harder to pull off in the future”, adds Darius Van Arman, co-CEO of Secretly Group. IMPALA’s statement goes further, warning that all consolidation in the music sector - “whether in distribution or other infrastructure, or recorded music, publishing or any other part of the music market such as live” - will continue to face heavy regulatory screening, as will concentration in other cultural sectors and the digital market.
A fourteen-month Phase II investigation has consequences beyond the legal outcome. The process will have cost Universal millions in legal and advisory fees - trivial to a company of its scale, but it dragged executive focus, delayed integration and kept Universal’s strategy under public scrutiny for over a year.
More importantly, the campaign brought the independent sector’s concerns to the attention of artists and labels who may not previously have considered them. Universal’s framing of itself as a friend to independent music - via the Virgin brand and its rhetoric about serving “independent music entrepreneurs” - was challenged publicly, repeatedly, and by hundreds of voices across the sector.
Will Universal care? Almost certainly not. But with its share price languishing around €20 per share, having dropped by nearly a third over the past year, and its business model under increasing pressure from shifting consumption patterns and flat ad-supported revenues at the streaming services, the major needs every positive angle it can find. Being publicly cast as a wolf in sheep’s clothing by hundreds of the independent companies it claims to serve is not one of them.
The CMA already answered the question the Commission didn’t ask
The Commission’s press release sets out three conclusions on the competitive landscape. First, that “several viable competitors” to Universal and Downtown exist, naming Sony Music, Warner Music, Believe, DistroKid, IDOL, Kontor and ONErpm.
Second, that the combined market shares of Universal and Downtown “remain moderate in any of the relevant markets”. And third - most consequentially - that the deal “will not significantly shift the negotiation position of UMG in its licensing discussions with DSPs”, including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.
The CMA’s 2022 report directly contradicts that third finding. It found that the majors’ leverage over streaming platforms comes not from their percentage of streams or revenue, but from the non-substitutability of their catalogues and a suite of contractual clauses that independent labels do not have in their streaming deals.
The CMA identified these clauses at paragraphs 3.14 to 3.17 of its report. They include anti-steering provisions in the majors’ contracts - formally “economic non-discrimination clauses” - that prevent streaming platforms from favouring another record company’s content on the basis that it is cheaper to license.
They include marketing most-favoured-nation clauses guaranteeing each major promotional support at least as favourable as any other label gets. They include playlisting clauses requiring a major’s share of tracks within certain playlists to broadly correspond to its overall share of streams.
They include must-carry obligations preventing streaming services from de-listing a major’s tracks. And they include change-of-business-model clauses allowing a major to renegotiate or terminate if a streaming service starts signing artists directly beyond certain thresholds.
Independent labels do not have these clauses. The CMA was explicit about this. They are protections that exist only for the majors, and they operate regardless of market share.
Under the CMA’s framework, the relevant question about the Downtown deal is not whether it adds enough streams to Universal’s total to cross some threshold of concern. It is whether it extends the reach of Universal’s contractual architecture to a larger share of the market’s music.
If Downtown’s four million creators end up flowing through Universal’s licensing agreement with Spotify, their streams would be covered by the anti-steering clauses, the playlisting guarantees, and the marketing MFNs that independent distributors cannot offer. They would contribute to Universal’s aggregate stream share - the figure that determines its guaranteed allocation of playlist slots - and would deepen the catalogue that Universal can present as non-substitutable when its next licensing negotiation comes around.
Universal has already used that negotiating power to reshape the streaming economy’s rules at the expense of independent creators. As IMPALA’s own statement notes today, the largest market player “has demonstrated its ability to impose changes on digital services that disadvantage competitors and lead to the demonetisation of large sections of repertoire”.
In late 2023, Deezer and Universal jointly launched an “artist-centric” royalty model in France. Spotify followed within weeks with its own changes, including a minimum threshold of 1000 annual streams before any track generates royalties - a policy that demonetised an estimated 86% of tracks on the platform when it took effect in April 2024.
The royalties freed up by removing those tracks from the royalty pool were redistributed upward. The independent sector bore the overwhelming cost; the majors received the overwhelming benefit.
Every catalogue that moves into Universal’s licensing framework adds weight to the next negotiation. And the question at those negotiations is increasingly not what the majors can get written into their agreements, but what they can get excluded when royalty payments to the major are being calculated.
If Spotify expands into AI-generated playlists or ambient listening, Universal has the leverage to negotiate that AI-generated consumption does not count against its share of the royalty pool - protecting its own catalogue while leaving everyone else exposed. Different rules for different rightsholders, depending on who has the bargaining power to carve out exemptions. And because these deals are locked behind NDAs, the wider industry may never know what has been agreed.
Downtown’s streams, and the negotiating weight they carry, would move from the independent column - where they had no such leverage - into Universal’s column, where they do.
The EC’s market share exercise does not capture any of this. It measures volume. The CMA’s inquiry examined the mechanisms through which that volume is converted into competitive advantage.
As for the Commission’s list of “viable competitors” - Sony, Warner, Believe, DistroKid, IDOL, Kontor, ONErpm - two of the seven are fellow majors whose presence does nothing to address the gap between major and independent. The independents on the list are real businesses, but none of them carry the full set of contractual protections that come with a major-label licensing agreement. An artist distributed through DistroKid does not benefit from anti-steering clauses, playlisting guarantees, or marketing MFNs. An artist distributed through Universal does.
There is also the question of who is sitting across the table from whom. Universal still holds a 3.3% equity stake in Spotify - never sold, unlike the stakes Sony and Warner cashed in years ago - currently worth in the region of $2-3 billion. Tencent Holdings, which owns 11.45% of Universal, and controls substantial voting rights in the company, also holds at least 8% of Spotify. Spotify in turn owns a stake in Tencent Music Entertainment, in which Universal also holds a small stake.
The CMA noted in its 2022 report that the majors’ shareholdings in Spotify were unlikely to materially increase their bargaining position, but the cross-ownership between Universal, Spotify, and Tencent means the parties negotiating the terms of the streaming economy have significant financial interests in each other’s success. Independent labels have no equivalent seat at that table.
Majors get promotion for free - independents pay with their royalties
There are two sides to Universal Music’s contractual wall.
For Downtown’s artists and label clients, absorption into Universal’s licensing framework likely brings protections they did not previously have. The anti-steering clauses that prevent Spotify from deprioritising their content in favour of cheaper alternatives; Universal’s aggregate playlisting guarantees; marketing MFNs ensuring Universal receives promotional support at least as favourable as any other label. These are advantages that independent distributors simply do not have access to, and they are not technological - they are contractual.
For independent artists and labels outside Universal’s ecosystem, the opposite happens. Every catalogue that moves behind the major-label contractual wall strengthens the wall itself. Anti-steering clauses do not just protect Universal’s content - they constrain what streaming platforms can do with everyone else’s. If Spotify cannot surface independently distributed music on the basis that it offers better licensing terms, then the ability of independent labels to compete on those terms is neutralised. The CMA identified this as a barrier to price competition between labels.
Spotify’s own 2025 annual filing confirms that independent artists are the primary participants in its marketplace programmes, where algorithmic visibility is purchased by accepting a discounted royalty rate. Anti-steering clauses prevent Spotify from making its own decisions to favour content that offers better licensing terms. But marketplace programmes sidestep this by putting the choice on the rightsholder: artists and labels volunteer to accept less money per stream in exchange for promotional consideration.
The majors, by contrast, have little need for these programmes.
The CMA’s inquiry uncovered a layer of promotional value already baked into their licensing agreements - the aforementioned playlisting guarantees, marketing MFNs, anti-steering protections - that delivers visibility without any royalty discount at all. The independent sector’s primary route to visibility on the platform is to pay for it through reduced royalties. The majors get it for free, as a contractual entitlement.
Each acquisition that expands the major-label share of the market - and contracts the independent share - widens this gap. More catalogue behind the contractual wall means more guaranteed playlist share for the majors, less open playlist real estate for everyone else, and greater pressure on independent artists to participate in marketplace programmes at a discount just to remain visible.
Playlisting makes this worse. If all three majors hold clauses linking their playlist share to their stream share, and those shares are all protected, then the portion of playlist real estate available through open competition is whatever is left after the contractual guarantees are satisfied. As acquisitions move streams from the independent column into the major column, the guaranteed portion expands and the open portion contracts.
Spotify’s 2025 filing shows the majors-plus-Merlin cohort at 72% of streams - up from 71% the previous year, the first such increase in the company’s history as a public company. Universal’s acquisition of [PIAS], completed in October 2024, means that its full-year streams will now be counted inside the major cohort for the first time, having previously fallen inside Merlin’s cohort. Downtown’s streams will push that figure higher still.
Spotify’s filing puts numbers on the problem
Spotify’s 2025 annual filing, published earlier this week, goes further.
Spotify confirms that it operates “voluntary marketplace programs that allow eligible artists, labels, and distributors to engage with tools so that they can identify priority sound recordings for consideration in personalized recommendations”. The filing states that “some of these programs apply a discounted royalty rate to streams generated in specified recommendation contexts”.
The phrase “benefits from certain marketplace programs” appears repeatedly in the filing’s cost-of-revenue discussion as a driver of margin improvement - partially offsetting rising music royalty costs on the premium side and contributing to gross margin expansion on the ad-supported side. Spotify does not disclose the aggregate value of these benefits, the participation rate, or the size of the discount.
Stream share may also overstate the independent sector’s economic position. If independent artists are disproportionately participating in marketplace programmes at discounted royalty rates, their 28% of streams translates to less than 28% of the royalty pool.
If the majors’ streams are at full contractual rates - or better, given MFN protections - their 72% translates to more than 72%. The Spotify filing says stream share data is “unaffected by any changes to Spotify’s royalty models”, which is technically correct but invites a reading of stream share as a proxy for economic share. Given the marketplace programme discounts, it is not.
Even on data, the Commission’s findings don’t hold up
As IMPALA’s Helen Smith says today, “IMPALA consistently set out that this case is not just about data”. But even on data, the Commission’s conclusions don’t necessarily stand up.
The Commission drew a sharp distinction between Curve and Downtown’s other platforms. It found that “the information processed by other Downtown products is not commercially sensitive. The data stored on these products is either publicly available or does not concern commercial terms of rivals of UMG”. That allowed it to accept the Curve sell-off as a sufficient remedy to address its competition concerns, leaving FUGA, CD Baby and Songtrust inside the deal.
This is hard to square with what those other Downtown-owned platforms do. FUGA processes delivery and streaming performance data for hundreds of independent labels - real-time and historical information about which releases are gaining traction, on which platforms, in which territories, and at what velocity. CD Baby handles equivalent data for millions of self-releasing artists. Songtrust administers publishing rights and tracks revenue flows for millions of compositions.
None of this is “publicly available” data in any meaningful sense to independent labels and artists. An independent label’s release-by-release streaming trajectory, its revenue patterns, its audience geography - this is operational intelligence of direct competitive value to a rival. The Commission’s finding that this data “does not concern commercial terms of rivals of UMG” rests on a narrow reading of “commercial terms” that excludes precisely the kind of market intelligence a competitor would most want to have.
IMPALA is clear, “data concerns of course extend beyond Curve”. But even if the Commission had got the data question right, it would still only be part of the picture. What this deal does to the structure of the market - shifting infrastructure, catalogue weight, and contractual leverage towards the market leader - is not something a data-focused remedy can address.
Switching isn’t as easy as the Commission thinks
The Commission concluded that switching between artist and label service providers “is already happening, and is neither costly nor time-consuming”. That is a stretch.
For a label with a substantial catalogue, migrating from one distributor to another is a significant operational undertaking - coordinating takedowns with the outgoing distributor, re-delivering assets to the new one, and managing the process with staff whose time has a cost even if it does not show up as a line item.
Labels may also be subject to minimum contract terms that prevent them from moving at all until those terms expire. For independent artists, the picture is worse.
Moving from one distributor to another is a process many find confusing and stressful, with widespread misunderstanding about how to maintain play counts, preserve playlist positions, and avoid gaps in availability that can damage an audience built over years. On paper, switching is possible. In practice, it is disruptive, risky, and not something most artists or labels undertake lightly.
IMPALA’s response today makes the point directly. The trade body calls on Universal to implement “an express transition system, free from penalties and exit fees, or obstruction or delays, or incentives to stay”. If switching were genuinely as frictionless as the Commission found, that demand would be unnecessary.
Even that understates the issue. Distribution in the streaming economy is not just file delivery. It is the licensing framework under which those files are monetised, the contractual protections that govern how they are promoted, and the data infrastructure that shapes decisions about release timing, playlist targeting, and audience development.
An artist or label leaving FUGA post-acquisition is not simply switching distribution partner. They are leaving a system that now sits inside Universal’s licensing architecture - with its anti-steering protections, its playlisting guarantees, its marketing MFNs - and moving to an independent distributor that operates without any of those protections.
The EC assessed switching costs in terms of operational friction. It did not assess what you lose when you switch - or, more importantly, what happens if you stay.
Artists and labels who remain on FUGA or CD Baby after the deal closes will find themselves inside Universal’s ecosystem whether they chose it or not. Their streams will count towards Universal’s aggregate share. Their data will flow through Universal’s systems. Their presence on the platform will strengthen Universal’s hand in the next licensing negotiation.
They have not signed a deal with a major label, but the practical effect is similar. This is consolidation by absorption - and it moves a significant number of creators out of the truly independent ecosystem, further squeezing the independent distributors and labels that remain outside the major-label system.
Selling Curve maybe doesn’t fix what the Commission thinks it fixes
The Commission’s remedy rests on the premise that selling Curve severs Universal’s access to commercially sensitive data. But the sell-off may not be as clean a break as that assumes.
Tom Allen co-founded Curve in 2019. When Downtown acquired the company in 2023, Allen stayed on, eventually becoming Downtown’s group-wide Chief Technology Officer - a role he has held since April 2024. In that capacity, he has overseen the integration of Curve’s technology across Downtown’s other divisions.
In an April 2023 interview, Allen said his team had “already started working with the other divisions in the group, such as FUGA”. By May 2024, Downtown confirmed publicly that “Curve has successfully integrated with multiple Downtown businesses”. In a December 2025 interview with Music Ally, Allen described the technology layer across the group, “We have technologies for FUGA on the delivery side and trends management, and Curve for royalty management”.
Under the sell-off terms, Universal will sell the entire Curve business including all employees - except two retained engineers. Allen, as Downtown’s CTO rather than a Curve employee, stays with Universal, something confirmed to CMU today by a Downtown representative. The same spokesperson also confirmed that Richard Leach, President of Curve, will go with the divested business.
Allen does not need to take client data with him to be useful. Two years of integrating Curve across Downtown’s platforms means he understands how royalty data connected to distribution data in FUGA, what patterns that revealed about rival labels’ business, and how that intelligence could be used commercially. That knowledge leaves with Curve’s client list but stays inside Allen’s head - and therefore inside Universal Music.
Separately, Universal keeps a duplicate copy of the Curve software itself, described in the commitments document as “sanitised” and stripped of client data, licensed for “limited internal purposes only”. The client data may be gone, but the software’s logic - how it processes royalty flows, how it connects to other systems, what it was built to extract - transfers with the copy.
IMPALA argued throughout the process that “the commonalities between the data held on Curve and on other services in the Downtown family, such as FUGA, CD Baby and Songtrust, are clear”, and that a Curve-only sell-off missed the point.
The Commission disagreed, finding that the data on other Downtown products “is either publicly available or does not concern commercial terms of rivals”. Whether that distinction holds up in practice - given two years of documented cross-platform integration - is a question the market will now answer.
This deal is about infrastructure, not catalogue
IMPALA’s case was never primarily about market share. The trade body argued from the outset that this acquisition was different from Universal’s 2012 acquisition of EMI. That deal was about catalogue. This deal is about infrastructure.
Downtown’s businesses are a big part of how independent music reaches streaming platforms. FUGA provides distribution infrastructure used by labels that license their catalogues through Merlin. CD Baby serves millions of self-releasing artists. Songtrust administers publishing rights for millions of songs. Together, they handle a substantial share of the music that reaches streaming platforms outside the major-label system.
As IMPALA Chair Dario Draštata puts it, “Independent labels and artists should not depend on their competitors for access”. That dependency now exists. Labels that use FUGA, artists who release through CD Baby, songwriters whose publishing is administered through Songtrust - all will now have their content and data flowing through networks owned by Universal.
The Commission concluded that sufficient alternatives exist. But the independent sector’s objection was never that alternatives don’t exist. It was that the combination of infrastructure control, data access and contractual leverage creates an advantage that the presence of DistroKid and IDOL does not offset.
As Draštata says today, “The question of independence and neutrality in distribution will remain essential for IMPALA… What is essential is that independent distributors are able to grow and there is proper competition and real choice for artists and labels. Power in the digital market will remain an issue, as well as the impact on cultural diversity”.
What happens now
Universal’s Downtown deal is now expected to close within weeks. Curve will be sold to an independent buyer approved by the Commission, under the supervision of a Monitoring Trustee. If Universal fails to find a buyer within the initial sell-off period, a Divestiture Trustee gains an exclusive mandate to sell the business “at no minimum price”.
The full non-confidential text of the Commission’s decision will be published on the case register in the coming weeks or months. That document will show why the Commission decided the broader infrastructure and negotiating position concerns it raised during Phase I of its investigation did not require a remedy. It will be the most important document in assessing whether the Commission asked the right questions about the market it was examining.
The CMA’s 2022 report warned that “further consolidation in the recorded music industry could lead to adverse effects for consumers and the music industry”. Three years later, that consolidation has arrived - approved by a regulator that, on the evidence of today’s press release, did not account for the contractual mechanisms through which competitive advantage in streaming actually works.
The independent sector, led by IMPALA, identified these mechanisms throughout the regulatory process. The Commission’s analysis, at least as described in today’s press release, did not engage with them.
Universal now controls more of the music industry’s infrastructure, a deeper non-substitutable catalogue, and a larger share of the streams that feed its contractual playlist guarantees. The independent sector has less of all three.
As Gee Davy, CEO of the UK’s Association Of Independent Music, puts it today, “We will be looking to both the UK competition authority [the CMA] and the EC’s monitoring trustee to ensure fair market behaviours moving forward”.
IMPALA, which has spent fourteen months making the case that the Commission was asking the wrong questions, has made clear it is not finished with its scrutiny of the Downtown deal. The full decision, when published, will show whether the gap between the questions IMPALA raised and the questions the Commission chose to answer is as wide as it appears - and what, if anything, can still be done about it.
