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BMG acquires Verse Music Group
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 30 June 2015
BMG has acquired the Verse Music Group, which is a bit like acquiring the Verve Music Group, but not as exciting. What a difference one letter can make. And they’re so close together on the keyboard too.
No, not really, there’s plenty of great tunage amongst the 40,000 odd songs and recordings controlled by the New York-based Verse Music Group, which includes records from the legendary funk label Salsoul Records, works by Nina Simone, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in the Bethlehem music catalogue, and the output of Golden Records, which, by the way, was the first children’s record label in the US with recordings by the likes of Danny Kaye, Roy Rodgers, Bing Crosby and Johnny Cash.
Confirming the acquisition, BMG’s Laurent Hubert told reporters: “Verse has assembled an extremely varied and wide-ranging catalogue which touches many of the most influential moments in popular music history. There are considerable synergies with existing BMG catalogues which make this acquisition particularly exciting”. He sounds almost thrilled to me.