the illusion of the music industry’s doors being wide open due to streaming collapses under the weight of the Big 3 labels’ continued dominance of the market
How is Universal Music Group (UMG), the largest music company in the world today, connected to notorious conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte?
Well, Bonaparte had a nephew named Napoleon III. Napoleon III was France’s first president, second emperor, and last monarch. Early in his term as Emperor of the French, he used his power to order the creation of a company called Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) — General Water Company in English. CGE became one of Europe’s largest suppliers of public water, responsible for city water in Lyon, Paris, and Nantes, and later expanding into other major European cities like Venice and Istanbul.
From the time of Napoleon III’s imperial decree (1853) to about 1980, all CGE did was water. 1980 marked the arrival of Guy Dejouany as President/CEO of CGE. Under his leadership, CGE was pushed rapidly into other fields including civil engineering, construction, waste management, heating, health, and communications. By the mid 1990s, CGE had stakes in over 2,200 companies. Finally, in 1998, the no-longer-a-water-company global conglomerate changed its name to Vivendi.
As part of its expansion into entertainment, Vivendi kicked off the 2000s with some era-defining purchases. They made waves in broadcasting with a $9 billion acquisition of premium French television channel Canal+. Their move into music was even bigger: the $34 billion acquisition of Seagram — producers of everyone’s favorite pine tree-flavored gin — which came with, among other assets, the newly-formed UMG.
Vivendi was the majority or sole owner of UMG during the following historical checkpoints in music business: peak CD revenue, the advent of Napster and digital downloads, the introduction of streaming, and the highest annual revenues in US music industry history.
New World, Old Rules: Vivendi and UMG Thrive In Oligopoly
This is old money. Taking nothing away from the business acumen of its leaders in the late 1900s, name another utility company that has grown to air PSG matches and make money off of Taylor Swift. National government investment plus a list of aristocratic families (including the Rothschilds) offering their support nearly guarantees a high level of initial success and plenty of room to grow.
In 2021, Vivendi decided to let UMG loose as an indepenent and publicly-traded company. Vivendi distributed most of its shares in UMG to Vivendi shareholders, and UMG’s strong opening on the stock market saw many shareholders win big. Lucian Grainge, UMG CEO, has received 450 million euros in shares since the UMG spinoff from Vivendi including a $100 million stock and options award that many shareholders voted against. UMG artists did not get much of anything from all of this activity.
Now, in a rush to appease various stakeholders by ensuring the company grows, UMG is aggressively seeking to buy publishing rights to the catalogs of legendary artists and swallowing up independent music labels who threaten their market share. This is good business for UMG, but the illusion of the music industry’s doors being wide open due to streaming collapses under the weight of the Big 3 labels’ continued dominance of the market.
In fact, much of the merging and acquiring that made UMG as big as it is today resembles the behavior that has landed Meta in a federal antitrust trial.
Eighty-four percent of music revenue in the US last year was earned by UMG (38.61 percent), Sony (27.38 percent), and Warner (18.39 percent). Almost 60 percent of UMG is owned by three groups — the Bolloré family (28 percent), Chinese holding company Tencent (20 percent), and the Pershing Holding Company (10 percent).
Why Should Music Listeners Care About Vivendi and UMG?
The people with the most power over the production of music treat it like nothing more than one of their thousands of other investments.
Like politics, television, mobile phone service, food, and more, you really only have a handful of choices when it comes to who provides you with music. There’s just too much shit happening in the world for people to be passive about what’s being placed in front of them.
An oligopoly in music means a lot of things for the quality of music and the listener experience. Since UMG’s chief responsibility is to its shareholders, the drive for profitability restricts art. We miss out on greater variety in production style, vocal style, lyrical content, artist branding, and an artist’s freedom to speak on their own behalf.
When is the last time you heard a song that wasn’t in 4/4 time?
What percentage of songs that enter the Billboard Hot 100 are not built on common chord progressions or recognizable samples?
For all the brilliant songwriting in today’s pop music, how often are we hearing songs that help us connect to the real world instead of disappear inside one person’s drama or escapist fantasies? “Rich Men North of Richmond” went viral because its candor, urgency, and concern with society shocked people out of a stupor.
We, the people, should be learning about each other better than Machine Learning (ML) or Large Language Models. Through the currency of attention, divesting from enormous music media platforms and putting a little more toward independent blogs and curators creates higher quality and more decentralized information on good music and artists. Better music coverage means an easier time finding gems in the vast amounts of quality music available in the streaming era.
UMG, Sony, and Warner do not have to disappear in order for people to gain some sense of freedom from how the Big 3 labels have programmed us to experience music.
Skipping one Live Nation-promoted concert to go see a local artist at a bar is an act of freedom. Seeking out one artist a month with under 10,000 monthly listeners on Spotify is an act of freedom. Toying around with your own music is an act of freedom that helps you respect what it takes for any artist in this world to make something meaningful.
How Do We Connect With Music Outside Of The Major Label System?
There must be better ways people can engage with music and the brilliant artists that make it. There have to be more ways music can generate social and economic good in a community.
We can’t begin to wonder how until humble listeners realize they are an active part of the music industry. Big labels are making moves across the African continent, for instance, because lovers of genres such as afrobeats and amapiano are putting the music on the map by themselves. Indonesians, Malaysians, and other Southeast Asian music listeners are highly active online and sometimes provide greater support to an upstart foreign artist than the artist receives in their home country.
Despite all the artists still chasing after a record deal, major labels are the ones that have to chase after artists and their listeners. Why else would they poke around in “underdeveloped” countries or eat up independent labels instead of competing in good faith? Given freedom of choice, it’s hard to believe 80 percent of money spent on music would go to three companies. Given freedom of choice, it’s hard to believe people would spend hundreds of dollars on nosebleed seats just to say they went to a certain show.
Ultimately, music cannot be controlled. Asking questions about how Vivendi, UMG, and similar entities do their best to control music is not meant to help a new group take their spot. Instead, we ask questions about the current music industry to find ways to create more opportunities for people to be fulfilled by making, sharing, and listening to music.
For the video version of this article, visit the ATC Sound YouTube channel below. If you’d like to help us help independent artists through quality journalism and more, consider supporting ATC Sound via Patreon
UPDATE (4/16/2025): Edited for typo