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Business News Deals EMI Sale Timeline Labels & Publishers
BMG buys Virgin and Famous UK publishing catalogues
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 21 December 2012
BMG has this morning announced the acquisition of the UK-based music publishing catalogues that Sony/ATV was forced to sell as part of its acquisition earlier this year of EMI Music Publishing.
As previously reported, the Sony/ATV-led consortium which bought the EMI publishing business agreed to sell off the Virgin and Famous UK catalogues, and works belonging to a handful of other European songwriters, as part of its deal to get approval from the European Commission for its EMI takeover. BMG, the version two music company founded by German media firm Bertelsmann in 2008, has always been a favourite to buy the catalogues, it having competed with Sony/ATV in the bidding for the entire EMI publishing company in 2011.
In a statement this morning, the German music rights company said: “BMG has announced that it has signed a binding contract to acquire selected music publishing catalogues, including the worldwide rights for the Virgin Music Publishing Companies, Famous UK Music Publishing and selected current songwriters from Sony/ATV and EMI Music Publishing. These include some of the biggest pop hits of the past three decades from artists such as Take That, Plan B, Kurt Cobain, Tears For Fears, The Human League, Iggy Pop, Duffy, Mark Ronson and The Kooks”.
The bigger regulator-forced sale of European assets belonging to the EMI record companies, which was acquired by Universal Music earlier this year, is ongoing.