LOS ANGELES — EMI Group Ltd., the iconic British music company that is home to The Beatles, Coldplay and Katy Perry, is being split and sold for $4.1 billion.
The deals will open EMI’s buyers, Universal Music and Sony/ATV, to regulatory scrutiny as they increase their dominance of the music industry.
Universal Music Group said Friday that it will pay $1.9 billion for the recording division, joining Universal artists including Lady Gaga and Eminem with EMI superstars such as David Guetta and Lady Antebellum.
A consortium led by Sony/ATV reached a separate deal to pay $2.2 billion for EMI’s publishing division, according to a person familiar with the matter. That business is in charge of songwriting copyrights for artists such as Rihanna and Adele. The person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony Corp. and the Michael Jackson estate, is a 38 percent partner in the consortium. The other parties were not immediately known.
The two-part sale, if approved by regulators, would further increase Universal Music’s dominance in recorded music and springboard Sony/ATV into the top spot as a music publisher, according to Impala, an association of European independent music companies that is against the deal.
The purchases would give Universal Music and Sony/ATV undue negotiating power over artists and distributors of music, even powerhouses such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes, Impala said.
Ny Ryan Nakashima, The Associated Press
