Warner Music Group, the major label considered to be one of the “Big Four” labels in the music industry, is losing money. Rapidly. So much so that the giant conglomerate is being sold off and there are five companies looking to snag it, for the estimated sum of $1.4-2.0 billion. You may wonder why anybody would pay that much for a company that’s losing money, and I wonder that too, but the five bidders, Sony Music, BMG Rights Management, Platinum Equity, Yucaipa Companies and Access Industries evidently believe that they can make something out of it.
It’s not for no good reason that Warner Music Group is valued at such a high price; Atlantic, Elektra, Roadrunner, Nonesuch and Reprise are just a handful of the dozens of labels that exist under the Warner Music Group imprint. Add all of those bands together and you have one hell of a roster and a large portion of the current popular music industry. Then also consider the back catalogue that they have, which includes four of the top ten worldwide best-selling records of all time, and you start to wonder why they’re losing money.
