home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
011689
/
01168900.007
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-17
|
1KB
|
24 lines
BUSINESS, Page 47Business NotesMUSIC PUBLISHINGThe Sound Of Money
Foreign investors, who have been snapping up U.S. assets
ranging from skyscrapers to forests, are latching onto more
ethereal pieces of Americana: popular songs. In two takeovers last
week, the publishing rights to nearly 300,000 American tunes passed
into foreign hands.
CBS Records, which last year became a subsidiary of Japan's
Sony, agreed to pay more than $35 million for Tree International,
the last big independent country-music publisher in Nashville. The
Tree catalog contains some 35,000 songs, including such hits as
Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel, Roger Miller's King of the Road
and Willie Nelson's Crazy. Says CBS Records president Tommy
Mottola: "We're going to build a music-publishing empire."
Only two days later, Britain's THORN EMI conglomerate said it
will pay $337 million to take over the music-publishing interests
of SBK Entertainment World, based in Los Angeles. The U.S. company
owns more than 250,000 songs, among them classic MGM motion-picture
melodies like Singin' in the Rain and Over the Rainbow, as well as
tunes written by James Taylor, Luther Vandross, the late Marvin
Gaye and many other pop singers.