Sony has made a big power play in the world of music as Rolling Stone has reported that the tech giant has purchased EMI Music Publishing, gaining the rights to over two million songs from the likes of Queen, Kanye West, and Alicia Keys. This makes Sony the world’s largest music publisher, throwing down a massive 2 billion dollars to acquire EMI. Such as move has industry insiders enthusiastic about the future of the music industry, as Sony’s willingness to make such a big deal shows that the industry has recovered from its nadir before the advent of streaming services. Sony recently sold off half of their shares in Spotify stock for approximately $750 million once that company went public last month, so the company was clearly not afraid to make another bold move in snapping up EMI.
With piracy on the rise and customers not interested in shelling out money to buy full albums, the music industry struggled for much of the past fifteen years until the likes of Spotify and other streaming services began to gain widespread appeal. With streaming becoming the preferred choice for the public to listen to music, companies like Sony are focusing on acquiring quality content in the form of songwriting royalty revenues. Sony, which already owns the lucrative back catalog of The Beatles, now controls about 32 percent of the market share in the music industry.
Ever since Sony bought out CBS records in 1988, the company has been known as one of the “Big 3” record labels (along with Warner Bros. and Universal) who account for most of the market share when it comes to recorded music. Both music recording and music publishing are separate revenue streams for record labels, so seeking out the publishing rights to a collection of songs can be incredibly lucrative for a company such as Sony.
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