UMG to change hands?

They're making I-pod fodder.

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Originally posted by J. A. Toon:

Todd, could you please elaborate?

I thought that Sony Classical had released some of the finest discs over the last couple of years.

Top performances, top recording quality. Just look at Perahia's Chopin Etudes, the Silk Road ensemble, and Volodos' Schubert sonatas, for example.

What's up?

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Sony has indeed released some superb CDs in the last few years. The problem is the ones you cite are almost all they released! Seriously, several months last year saw only one new release. Add that to the dearth of new output the fact that some of Sony's stars have left, most notably Esa-Pekka Salonen and Hillary Hahn (both to DG, no less), and the near term future does not look especially good. Then there's all of that krossover krap. (I’m not sold on the Silk Road project, though it does have some merit.) Hell, it's almost as bad as at RCA/BMG.

And then there is the problem with Sony's reissue program. Or rather, its lack thereof. Sony is sitting on one of the deepest, best catalogs in classical music, yet they reissue very little. They made a big push in the early and mid-90s, but where are the new mid- and budget-priced goodies they could sell? Fortunately, the British, French, and Austrian arms of Sony do offer some enticing reissues, but they can be hard to get. (Just try to find discs in the Casadesus edition outside of France.)

Compare Sony to what DG has been doing the last couple of years. If Apple succeeds, they could kill or at least damage all of those wonderful labels in the Universal stable. And I’m not even considering jazz and rock!

Oh Crap!

A bidding war for UMG? Say it ain't so. (I know the Post ain't the most prestigious news organization. Let's hope this is wrong.)

http://www.nypost.com/business/33958.htm

If either Apple or M'Soft is going to acquire Universal - something I yet have to see happening, there's been to many failed jumbo mergers in the recent past - you can bet your bottom dollar, Todd, they are going to strip and sell the classical divisions you're so concerned about. Deutsche, Decca and Philips Classics make about three percent of the entire turnover in music and there's no growth whatsoever, plus they are not fit for the formats the software boys are thinking of. So in the event of a merger it won't take long before these labels are sold to a publishing conglomerate, which is where they should be, if independence is no option.

Herman