{"id":241565,"date":"2025-10-02T18:32:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T17:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=241565"},"modified":"2025-10-03T17:20:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T16:20:02","slug":"top-european-music-lawyer-dismisses-umg-downtown-data-concerns-as-fantasy-or-paranoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/top-european-music-lawyer-dismisses-umg-downtown-data-concerns-as-fantasy-or-paranoia\/","title":{"rendered":"Top European music lawyer dismisses UMG\/Downtown data concerns as ‘fantasy or paranoia’"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of France’s top music industry lawyers has dismissed concerns over Universal Music Group’s access to independent label data through UMG’s proposed $775 million acquisition<\/a> of Downtown Music Holdings.<\/p>\n

Micha\u00ebl Majster<\/strong>, founding partner at Paris-based Majster & Nehm\u00e9<\/strong> and a 30-year legal veteran, described the data-related fears as stemming “more from fantasy or paranoia than from a concrete, realistic, and rational analysis”.<\/p>\n

During his career, Majster<\/strong> has represented both multi-platinum and emerging artists in France, plus prominent independent record labels and distributors, and a major music publisher. He has not represented UMG or Downtown.<\/p>\n

He is rated\u00a0in the top tier of music law<\/a><\/span>\u00a0practitioners<\/a> in France by the industry-standard D\u00e9cideurs Leaders League<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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In July, some 200 employees of independent music companies and trade bodies signed a letter <\/span><\/a>citing data concerns about UMG’s potential acquisition of Downtown subsidiaries FUGA<\/strong> and Curve Royalty Systems<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The letter contended that UMG’s ownership<\/strong> of these subsidiaries would grant it access to sensitive data from independent labels, such as “distribution information \u2013 including artists and song trends, and performance on digital platforms [plus] critical business information such as pricing, contractual terms and strategic relationships”.<\/p>\n

Majster<\/strong> argued that much of this data is already “easily publicly available or accessible” through existing market intelligence services.<\/p>\n

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“I do not see how this Downtown data provides any insight that UMG doesn’t already have.”<\/p>\n

Micha\u00ebl Majster, Majster & Nehm\u00e9<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“You can see the number of streams for each title on Spotify, for example,” he noted, adding that labels routinely use specialized tools like Luminate<\/strong> and Chartmetric<\/strong>\u00a0for in-depth market analysis.<\/p>\n

“When [I’m] negotiating on behalf of artists with a major like UMG it is clear to me that [Universal] already has highly sophisticated tools that allow it to understand the music market and all market trends,” Majster<\/strong> said.<\/p>\n

“Acquiring Downtown will not change the situation significantly in this respect.”<\/p>\n

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Europe’s competition regulator\u00a0confirmed<\/span><\/a> in July that it had opened an in-depth (Phase 2) inquiry into UMG’s proposed $775 million<\/strong> acquisition of Downtown, following an initial Phase 1 investigation.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The EC has cited preliminary concerns that the transaction may allow UMG<\/strong> to “reduce competition in the wholesale market for the distribution of recorded music in the European Economic Area by acquiring commercially sensitive data of its rival record labels.”<\/p>\n

The original November 26 deadline for the investigation’s completion was recently extended to December 10.<\/p>\n

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Addressing specific concerns about UMG accessing artist royalty data via Curve Royalty Systems, Majster<\/strong> questioned the practical value of doing so for the major.<\/p>\n

“I do not understand how the data reflected in artists’ royalty statements could be of any interest whatsoever to a label [considering signing them],” he said.<\/p>\n

“When you enter into negotiations with an artist \u2014 whether through their manager, their lawyer, or directly with the artist \u2014 you can simply request this information,” Majster<\/strong> said, noting that competing labels usually receive the same information simultaneously during bidding wars.<\/p>\n

“Negotiations are based more on what an artist wants to achieve in the future, which is not necessarily correlated with what they have already in their contracts.”<\/p>\n

“I do not understand how the data reflected in artists’ royalty statements could be of any interest whatsoever to a label… When you enter into negotiations with an artist, you can simply request this information.”<\/p>\n

Micha\u00ebl Majster, Majster & Nehm\u00e9<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Addressing fears about UMG<\/strong> using Downtown or FUGA’s data to identify emerging artists and sign them ahead of independent labels, Majster<\/strong> was skeptical.<\/p>\n

“The entire market has so much access to data,” he said. “They can all see the streams on a weekly basis of every song in the world in every country.<\/p>\n

“I do not see how this Downtown data provides any insight that UMG doesn’t already have.”<\/p>\n

He pointed to existing major-owned distribution services<\/strong> \u2013 Sony’s the Orchard, Universal’s Virgin Music Group, and Warner’s ADA \u2013 as evidence.<\/p>\n

“If the [internal partner label] data from a distributor was so important, then we would have already seen the disruptive effects on the business of the majors using their data from, for example, The Orchard, Virgin [Music Group], and ADA to advantage themselves. Has anyone really felt that?”<\/p>\n

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Universal has proposed acquiring Downtown<\/strong> (plus FUGA and Curve) through its indie-servicing division, Virgin Music Group (VMG)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, VMG co-CEOs JT Myers<\/strong> and Nat Pastor<\/strong> addressed internal data protection concerns in a letter to<\/a> staff<\/a>, stating: “Betraying the trust our clients have bestowed on us would be self-destructive: they would quickly, and quite rightly, end the relationship. Which is why we’re proud to say that since the day we entered this business, we have never had a single complaint of misuse of client information of any kind.”<\/p>\n

Majster<\/strong> emphasized that any data misuse by a Downtown-owning UMG would trigger severe consequences: “Any misuse of this data would cause significant reputational damage and could result in severe sanctions from the competent authorities in the various European countries.”<\/p>\n

He noted that such data would typically fall under GDPR protections<\/strong> in Europe, and would likely be covered by confidentiality agreements between Curve<\/strong> and its clients.<\/p>\n

Crucially, he noted the absence of documented cases of major labels misusing distribution or services data to date. “Never!”<\/strong> he stated when asked about such instances over the past decade, adding that concerns around potential UMG data misuse appear to lack specific examples of problematic practices.<\/p>\n

“No specific cases are given [by critics of the Downtown deal] to illustrate these fears or any potentially problematic practices,” Majster<\/strong> observed.<\/p>\n

UMG has maintained confidence<\/a> that its Downtown acquisition will create “an improved offering in the growing and highly competitive label services category.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of France’s top music industry lawyers has dismissed concerns that UMG might misuse indie label data through its proposed $775m acquisition of Downtown <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":236792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1914,2890,269],"class_list":["post-241565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-downtown","tag-umg","tag-universal-music-group"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241565"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241649,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241565\/revisions\/241649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}