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Sony buys BMG stake from Bertelsmann

Sony on Tuesday agreed to buy the 50 percent it does not already own in music giant Sony BMG from German media group Bertelsmann.

Sony buys BMG stake from Bertelsmann
Photo: DPA

Financial details were not disclosed but sources familiar with the matter said that for the German firm the deal was valued at around $1.5 billion (€960 million).

“This move is consistent with our new growth strategy and will enable us to focus on our defined growth areas,” Bertelsmann chairman Hartmut Ostrowski said in a statement.

When Ostrowski took over his post in December of last year, he labelled the company’s music sector as developmentally weak and planned to place it under review. In June, the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Ostrowski had decided to get out of the music business owing to falling sales caused by internet downloads.

“Sony has been an excellent partner, and they are the right company to take this business to the next step and ensure that it realizes its full value and potential,“ Ostrowski said.

Sony and Bertelsmann had each owned half of the music publishing firm since its creation in 2004, and Sony reportedly had an option to buy Bertelsmann’s stake.

“This acquisition will allow us to achieve a deeper and more robust integration between the wide-ranging global assets of the music company and Sony’s products, operating companies and affiliates. It enables us to offer a total entertainment experience to consumers,” Sony CEO Howard Stringer said Tuesday.

Sony Music Entertainment Incorporated (SMEI), as the new entity will be known, is to encompass a string of music labels that include Arista Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, J Records, Jive Records, RCA Records and Zomba. Among its best-known artists are Celine Dion, Alicia Keys, Yo-Yo Ma, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Jay Chou.

Bertelsmann is also active in television with the RTL group, publishing, with Gruner + Jahr and Random House, services, and book and record clubs. Those clubs are currently being restructured however, and their partial sale is also expected to follow.

afp/ddp/tl

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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