Music at Your Fingertips

Running Head: SONY GROUP: MUSIC AT YOUR FINGERTIPS…OR NOT

Sony Group: Music at Your Fingertips…or Not

Cindy Alberts

Management Information Systems

June 28, 2008

Craig Cooper

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Music at your fingertips. Your favorite TV program at a time that’s convenient for you. Everything on the go. The lives we lead are so fast-paced that these small conveniences are a necessity to most of us. Imagine what your world would be like if one of these things were missing or not accessible. Sony Group, with all of its subsidiaries, is a tremendous provider of these conveniences.

Sony Group is a Japanese based conglomerate with a diverse business structure, of which , includes electronics, video, communications, video game consoles and information technology products, just to name a few. A subsidiary of Sony Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is a product of a merger between music industry divisions of both Sony Group and Bertelsmann Music Group, two of the industry’s “Big Five”. The subsidiary in itself is massive and includes such companies as Arista Records, Columbia Records (from the original “Big Five”), Epic Records, Jive Records, RCA Victor (also in the original “Big Five”), and RCA Records, as well as many others. The humble beginnings of the entire corporation began after World War II in 1945 when Masura Ibuka began doing business as a radio repairman in a bombed-out building in Tokyo. With many changes in the way society perceives the business of music, Ibuka probably wouldn’t recognize the business he built literally from the ground up.

The music industry has not always been about the glitz, the glamour or the money. Music in the early years was built around the church and slowly moved into the commercialized industry we have...