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And Finally Business News Labels & Publishers
Sony/ATV does not exist
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 11 February 2021
You know Sony/ATV, the biggest music publisher in the world, right? Ha, no, you don’t. You’re wrong! Incorrect! Mistaken! Misguided! Imagine that noise you get on ‘Family Fortunes’ when you pick something that none of the one hundred people surveyed said. Yes, that. If you tried to be more wrong, you simply couldn’t be. You could go on a nineteen week intense training course all about how to be wrong, and still not be any more wrong. That’s how wrong you are. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
You see, Sony/ATV doesn’t exist. It is not a thing. If you had a list of all the things in the world, and you spent a few years reading the list out loud, possibly in a field near Gloucester, the one thing you would eventually discover, once you finally got to the bottom of that list, is that Sony/ATV is not featured on it. It’s not listed. Not even at the bottom of the page. Fuck it, stick the list in Microsoft Word and use the find function. The find function will return a “not found” result. Because Sony/ATV is not on the list. Sony/ATV is not a thing.
Not only is Sony/ATV not a thing, it never was. You must have dreamt it. That’s the only explanation. It was probably that dream you had the other night. You know, the one where you were in Birmingham. And then Liverpool. And then on the ‘Eastenders’ set. It was confusing. There were muppets. And grades. And someone called Lew. Then you were in Liverpool again. Definitely somewhere Northern. There were beetles. Lots of beetles. And songs. Lots of songs. And Michael Jackson.
What the hell was Michael Jackson doing there? Paul McCartney was right pissed off. Or maybe that’s an urban legend. And then there was loads of money on a table. And Michael Jackson was spending it all on nonsense. Lots and lots of nonsense. And then, there it was, on the wall, in a big swish corporate office, in front of Michael, and Marty – who the hell is Marty? – but you saw it, it was there, a big fat logo. It said ATV. No, hang on. Sony. It said Sony/ATV. Then you woke up. It had all been a dream.
Because, and I can’t stress this enough, Sony/ATV does not exist. There’s Sony Music Publishing. We all know that. Who doesn’t love Sony Music Publishing? But Sony/ATV? A theme tune publisher that bought The Beatles repertoire, got acquired by Michael Jackson, merged with another music publisher named after a TV station, and then became the biggest songs business in the world? No, that doesn’t sound realistic at all, does it?
So yes. Sony/ATV is no more. All hail Sony Music Publishing. With a brand new logo. A brand new logo that, in fact, is “an abstraction of sound waves – with resonance and vibrations that express infinitely expanding opportunities for songwriters”. Yeah, whatever you say. Ironically, it reminds me a little of the old ATV logo. Except, of course, there was no old ATV logo. Because, for the final fucking time, Sony/ATV does not exist.
