Old School Deal With Michael Jackson Leaves Sony BMG Begging For Relief
Sony is reportedly pushing Michael Jackson to renegotiate a restrictive publishing pact indicative of how the old school music industry got itself into such a mess.
Apparently a clause in the existing agreement between Jackson and Sony prevents the company from backing a music publisher to compete with their joint Sony/ATV venture which controls the copyrights to all 252 Beatles songs and more.
Sony BMG is desperate to enter the music publishing market to offset the drop in recorded music sales.
Share on:
Does Sony really need another music publisher?
To exclude publishing was one of several big mistakes that doomed Sony BMG from the start. But to start from scratch now doesn’t make much sense.
It is no coincidence that Schmidt-Holtz starts talking about Sony BMG entering into publishing just after Bertelsmann sold its music publishing division to Universal.