Universal Music, in fact, had quite an acquisitive year, and not just for the purposes of diversification. Their other high profile purchase was of V2, the former record label of Richard Branson which had been in the hands of bank Morgan Stanley before being flogged to the major. They merged it in with their Mercury division and cut most of the former indie's staff in the process.
Needless to say, the largest major record company in the world swallowing up two of the UK independent sector's biggest companies did not go down well with the indie community, though both acquisitions got past UK competition regulators with relative ease. Universal Music's other big purchase - on the music publishing side of the business - went ahead but didn't get past regulators with quite so much ease. Universal bought BMG Music Publishing from German conglom Bertelsmann last year, but European competition authorities invested much time in considering the merger of the Universal and BMG publishing enterprises meaning they only gave it their approval in May of this year. Despite both Universal and Bertelsmann initially predicting the merger would get the regulator green light without any problems, mainly because market leader music publisher EMI Music Publishing was already about the same size of the combined Universal BMG enterprise, in the end European Commission officials forced Universal to sell off several bits of BMG's publishing catalogue to get permission for the merger. While pan-European indies body IMPALA didn't really approve of the merger, they welcomed the conditions EC officials enforced.
IMPALA was less impressed with the other major music business decision to come out of the European Commission this year - the one relating to SonyBMG. 2006, of course, had been a good year for IMPALA when the European Courts ruled that EC officials should never have let Sony Music and BMG to merge back in 2004 - basically siding with the indie trade body who had gone to court to fight the EC approved merger. In the 2006 ruling the European Court said EC officials had not conducted a sufficiently detailed investigation of the impact of a SonyBMG merger in order to let it go ahead. So this year EC officials reinvestigated the merger proposals, in much more detail, and, erm, reached the same conclusion - that a merged SonyBMG did not have a detrimental effect on the wider music industry. No conditions were attached to that ruling - ie SonyBMG weren't forced to sell off anything in order to satisfy the regulator. IMPALA were not impressed, and are now talking to the European Ombudsmen about the whole thing. SonyBMG, meanwhile, continues to trade regardless.
The European Court's 2006 ruling on SonyBMG had also had an impact on various proposals for an EMI Warner merger, something which had seemed quite likely at the time. In theory the second EC ruling giving the SonyBMG merger the green light could have reignited EMI Warner merger talks, though by that point Terra Firma had bought the former and all merger talks were off. And anyway, prior to all that Warner had done a deal with IMPALA which had seen the indie body pledge to support a Warner takeover of EMI, should such a takeover be attempted (in the end it wasn't) in return for a commitment by the major to support a thing called Merlin.
Merlin is a new globally focused digital rights organisation founded by the indie movement at the start of the year. It isn't entirely clear what Warner would have done for Merlin in return for winning IMPALA's support for a merged EMI Warner, though the arrangement between indie trade body and major record company was not without controversy. Not every indie label supported the move, most vocally Ministry Of Sound, who were of the opinion that a handful of indies who had most to gain from the Merlin proposals had misused their influence over the trade body and had prioritised the success of their new digital rights venture over the interests of the wider indie sector. In the end most indies said they supported IMPALA, though not after a very public squabble between Ministry and the UK's Association Of Independent Music (who had backed the IMPALA plan). Of course all of this proved to be irrelevant because by August Terra Firma had secured ownership of EMI and any talks of a Warner merger were off.
While Terra Firma's EMI purchase, Universal's various acquisitions, and the ongoing debate over the SonyBMG merger grabbed most headlines, other deals were done in the world of recordings and music publishing. Most notably the Beggars Group bought Sanctuary Music's stake in legendary indie Rough Trade (before Universal bought Sanctuary) while in the publishing world a newly acquisitive Sony/ATV bought the much sought after Famous Music off Viacom.