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Sony last month signed a deal to acquire the stake that
deceased pop star held in Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the world's
largest music publisher, which owns copyrights to most of the
Beatles' songs and songs by the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift,
Pharrel Williams and Kanye West.
Warner Music Group -- Sony's rival -- has expressed its concerns
to the European Commission, said a person familiar with the
matter, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of
the issue.
"This gives Sony complete control of both parts of the business,
the music recording and the music publishing. They would have
more than 50 percent of the market in Europe," the person said
on Thursday.
"The deal should be blocked or the company make appropriate
undertakings."
Lobbying group Impala, which represents independent labels and
national trade associations, expressed the same worries.
"It will increase their market power via control shares. In a
nutshell they will have more negative power over more music and
the EU already flagged that as a problem before, when it cut
Sony back when it bought EMI," Impala's executive chair Helen
Smith said.
Sony had to sell the worldwide publishing rights to four
catalogs and the musical works of 12 artists including Robbie
Williams and Lenny Kravitz in return for EU consent to buy EMI's
music publishing businesses in 2012.
Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso declined to comment. Sony
had no immediate comment and Warner did not immediately reply to
an email for comment.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
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