Universal Music Group: Decca's Saved Masters, a Vault Fire and TikTok

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Universal Music Group traces part of its roots to the American branch of Decca Records, which during World War II declined to melt down its metal master recordings for scrap and later donated more than 200,000 historic masters to the Library of Congress. Decca, founded in 1934, merged with MCA in 1962. Electronics maker Matsushita bought MCA in 1990 for about $6.6 billion, then sold 80 percent in 1995 to the Canadian liquor company Seagram, which treated music catalogs as royalty-paying assets. Seagram added PolyGram in 1998, and in 2000 the French conglomerate Vivendi bought Seagram's entertainment holdings. In 2011 UMG agreed to buy EMI's recorded music division for $1.9 billion, and European and U.S. regulators forced it to sell Parlophone, Mute and Chrysalis while keeping the Beatles and Robbie Williams.

In the CD era, minimum advertised price programs tied retailer ad money to price floors, and settlements in 2000 and 2002 followed findings that buyers paid up to $5 more per album. UMG licensed its catalog to Spotify in 2008 and in 2013 held all top 10 spots on the Hot 100. On June 1, 2008, a fire at Universal Studios Hollywood destroyed a vault UMG rented, holding over 118,000 assets covering about 500,000 song titles, a loss not widely known until a 2019 New York Times report. Vivendi spun UMG off on Euronext Amsterdam in 2021 at a valuation above 50 billion euros.

• The vault held masters from Chess and Impulse, with work by John Coltrane, Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday, Nirvana, Tupac and Eminem; UMG disputed the severity.
• Taylor Swift's 2018 Republic Records deal required any Spotify share sale proceeds to reach artists as non-recoupable payments.
• Under CEO Lucian Grainge, UMG pulled its catalog from TikTok in early 2024 in a dispute over royalty rates.
• UMG suspended Russian operations in 2022 and partnered with BandLab Technologies in 2023 on AI principles for music.
• In early 2026 the board, backed by the Bollore family, rejected Bill Ackman's roughly $60 billion offer and a move to the New York Stock Exchange.