Major Label Up for Sale – Sony or Universal Looking for a Buyer
Reports have surfaced that Universal or Sony are looking for a buyer. At the moment it hasnt been confirmed which major label is on the chopping block, but sources are saying that its 100% not Warner Music.
According to the source, the boards of both Sony and Vivendi are sick of holding on to, in his words, “these bags of shit” and want to divest. “One of these company’s will be sold in the next 6 to 12 months,” he says.
Vivendi has long been trying to get rid of Universal as the French company has been a loggerheads with Universal Music CEO Lucian Grainge for years.
As for Sony, it’s stale at best. “Sony’s a nice company. It’s fairly insignificant really”, Grainge recently told the Financial Times. ”They’ve got some good acts and deals that I’d like us to have some day…I don’t care about Doug Morris. I don’t care about Sony. That’s the past. It’s an old company.”
It will be interesting to hear who a buyer might be. News Corp have been able to systematically cock up all their previous attempts to run technology companies and these days a lot of a music business is technology focused. It also seems like Bertelsmann have made their decision and recently purchased BMG.
I guess we will just have to wait and see.