Universal Music Group also has the great resource of excellent corporate integration and acquisition skills. Throughout the company’s history and especially in recent years, UMG has successfully completed several business acquisitions. In 2001, UMG acquired an online subscription music service, EMusic.com, which it used to help grow digital sales and internet related operations. From 2003 to 2008, UMG made over six acquisitions of different record labels which helped the company achieve the largest music catalog in the industry. More importantly, in 2006, UMG acquired BMG Music Publishing and in turn became the world’s largest music publisher. The acquisition of Univision Music Group in 2008, expanded UMG’s reached to nearly 50% of the Latin music market. Universal Music Group has an obvious history of making successful acquisitions. The company’s ability to make acquisitions is a highly valuable and rare resource that others in the industry would find costly to duplicate.
Finally, Universal Music Group possesses the great resource of being able to attract the top talent in the music industry. UMG has the largest palette of the most popular artists in every music genre. The reputation that UMG has within the industry for really jumpstarting and growing artists’ careers is well known. Even UMG’s CEO, Doug Morris, is known for his ability to find common bonds with top artists and bring them into the company. This resource of UMG is again, valuable, rare, and costly to duplicate.