Nashville’s Capitol Records, Sony/ATV/Tree Publishing To Change Hands
November 11th, 2011
If a deal reported as almost certain by the Wall Street Journal goes through as expected, the music landscape could shift in Nashville and worldwide. As in our neighbor Capitol Records would be owned by Universal Music Group, which also owns MCA & Mercury Records. On the publishing side, EMI would be owned by Sony, which owns Nashville’s Sony/ATV/Tree Music. It’s all due to the long-anticipated sale of music giant EMI Group finally coming to fruition.
The Journal report says, “EMI’s recorded-music unit will be sold to Vivendi SAs Universal Music Group for $1.9 billion, the companies confirmed Friday. A group spearheaded by Sony Corp.s music division is to buy the publishing operation for $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The publishing deal, bringing the total value to $4.1 billion, could be announced later Friday.”
They Write for Beyoncé, the National, Miranda Lambert: The Secrets of Songwriters – WSJ.com
August 13th, 2010
At the Sony/ATV writers’ quarters, near portraits of writers such as Red Lane and Rodney Crowell, the sound of music leaks out of rooms that writers have booked to work in teams. One of the most recent releases with Mr. (Tom) Douglas’s name on it, “The House That Built Me,” gestated for six years, starting when co-writer Allen Shamblin mentioned a line he’d read somewhere: “We don’t build houses, they build us.” The writers sketched out a song about someone visiting their childhood home, looking for direction in life. But it felt unfocused and the writers put it aside for four years until 2008, when the song gelled around a new refrain: “If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave, won’t take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me.”
The response from Sony/ATV’s song pluggers, who play matchmaker between writers and recording artists, was immediate. “It was one of the five days a year where the flares go up and the beacons sound,” Mr. Douglas says. The song went to country star Miranda Lambert. It was pushed as a single and spent four weeks at No. 1 on country radio.
more via They Write for Beyoncé, the National, Miranda Lambert: The Secrets of Songwriters – WSJ.com.