Assuming, though, that 360 is the way forward, I've long been suggesting a merger between Live Nation and EMI or Warner, because, if you assume EMI and Warner need to ultimately grow to better compete with bigger rivals Universal and SonyBMG, surely a merger that results in diversification is more attractive than two more majors making one even bigger major all focused on one dwindling revenue stream. Still, none of that going on this year, with the record company merger file looking really rather thin compared to recent years.
That said, the big merger story from 2004 - SonyBMG - continued to create headlines this year, for two reasons.
Firstly, because, after much speculation (pretty much ever since 2004 in fact), Japan's Sony Corp announced it was buying Germany's Bertelsmann out of the joint venture record company. Bosses at the German media conglom continued to deny they were about to bail out of the record industry at the start of the year, but rumours such a bail out was, in fact, on the cards continued to grow nevertheless.
For a time it was suggested a third party may take Bertelsman's half of SonyBMG, with the founder of Zomba Records, Clive Calder, reportedly interested. It would have been an interesting deal given that he'd have paid $1.5 billion for BMG, which includes the former Zomba label which they paid him $3 billion to acquire 2002.
But it was not to be. In August Sony announced it had reached an agreement to acquire complete ownership, meaning SonyBMG will become Sony Music Entertainment as of the 1 Jan 2009. Bertelsmann will hold onto the BMG name for a new much small music licensing agency they launched this Autumn.
The SonyBMG story stayed in the news also because the opposition to the 2004 merger mounted by pan-European indie label trade body IMPALA continued. They've been fighting the merger through the European courts ever since it was first given approval by European Commission competition officials.
As you'll remember, in 2006 they successfully persuaded the European Courts that the Commission did not conduct a thorough enough investigation before approving the merger. In 2007 the Commission did a second more thorough investigation and approved the merger for a second time, while SonyBMG appealed the original 2006 ruling. Which means this year IMPALA were fighting SonyBMG's appeal of the 2006 ruling while themselves appealing the Commission's 2007 ruling that approved the merger for the second time. Simple hey?
All of which meant IMPALA didn't have the litigation brain space to fight the European Commission's ruling that Sony should be allowed to acquire complete ownership of SonyBMG. Though they were more than a little pleased when the elected European Parliament raised its own concerns regarding that ruling, and the Commission's general attitude to consolidation in the European music industry. This story, then, will rumble on, though the further it gets from 2004 the less and less likely any break up of SonyBMG, now Sony Music again, becomes.