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4
Societal indicators
Vivendi’s Four “Core” Issues relating to Human Rights
In 2014, young UMG artists once again received numerous awards:
at the
Victoires
award ceremony, the album
Psycho Tropical Berlin
by
the group La Femme was named Album Revelation of the Year, while
Stromae, the 29-year-old Belgian-Rwandan singer, a major favorite of
the ceremony, won three Victoire awards. Lorde, the 18-year-old New
Zealand songwriter, won Grammy Awards for her title track “Royals”
which was named Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
In September 2014, at the Gramophone Awards (the equivalent of the
Academy Awards for classical music), UMG again stood out: the Decca
and Deutsche Grammophon labels won four prestigious awards, including
Artist of the Year, which went to Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
In 2014, UMG also boasted a number of successes in China and
Southeast Asia. The EMI label signed the mandopop superstar A-Mei,
a genuine icon of the Chinese musical scene, and Show Lo and Rainie
Yang, two other key artists in the region.
Universal Music France has numerous African artists signed to labels and
in its catalog, such as Ayo (Nigeria), Benjamin Clementine (Ghana) and
Tiken Jah Fakoly (Ivory Coast). In 2014, it launched the first pan-African
musical talent contest “Island Africa Talent,” co-produced with Canal+
and aired on the new A+ channel. A tour with the four finalists will also
be organized in French-speaking Africa. In order to strengthen its local
presence, Universal Music France launched the Island Africa label of
the same name: Baloji, a rapper of Congolese origin, was the first artist
signed.
In South Africa, UMG supports local creativity by signing artists
who reflect the country’s variety of musical and linguistic traditions.
Consequently, the albums that came out in 2014 gave pride of place
to repertoire sung in the Zulu, Xhosa, Nguni, Tsonga and Afrikaans
languages in styles as diverse as Jazz, Hip Hop, traditional music and
Gospel.
In India, UMG has entered into a partnership with Peninsula Studio, a
studio for artists whose objective is to promote traditional Indian music.
UMG publishes, markets and distributes productions from this studio.
p
p
Showcasing musical heritage
Showcasing musical heritage is a priority for UMG’s business. Therefore,
the group is developing platforms and applications in order to exploit its
exceptional artists and catalog, while continuing with its investments.
Actions taken by UMG in favor of promoting musical
heritage (youth talent, local talent, digitization
of heritage works)
GRI
UNGC OECD Scope covered
MSS M3
1, 2
II, IV
UMG (9 focus group countries)
In 2014, UMG introduced uDiscover, a free-to-consumer global platform
offering new ways to explore the catalog and to discover Universal Music
artists. With more than 600,000 unique visitors per month, uDiscover is
a new platform for discovering legendary UMG artists, thus helping to
diversify the musical culture of listeners.
In the United States, to celebrate the 75
th
anniversary of the Blue Note
label, UMG introduced a Blue Note 75 application devoted to the iconic
jazz label. The application, which is available on iTunes, Spotify, Deezer
and Rdio, encourages listeners to rediscover the vast Blue Note catalog,
including an interactive timeline of cover art flow that traces the evolution
of the label from early jazz into today’s modern explorations.
In November 2014, UMG’s Decca Records, Deutsche Grammophon
and Mercury Classics joined forces with Global Radio’s Classic FM to
launch the application Composed in the United Kingdom. Composed is
a streaming service offering classical music lovers a chance to find their
listening choices from among the vast repertoire of the finest recordings
ever made by the labels. Furthermore, UMG launched Sinfini Music
in Australia in 2014, after first launching it in the United Kingdom in
2013. Sinfini Music is a site that brings classical music to a broad and
diverse audience. It was enormously successful (100,000 unique visitors
per month) due to a rich offering of music and published content (local
composers and artists, events and participation in educational projects in
partnership with music schools). The development of a dedicated mobile
application and a web-TV also facilitate access to the classical repertoire.
As part of the same approach to engage a broader audience for classical
music and young people in particular, Deutsche Grammophon, a Universal
Classics label, launched the Yellow Lounge. The purpose of this unique
concept is to move classical music out of traditional concert halls and
into the hippest clubs where internationally renowned classical artists
such as Hélène Grimaud and Anne-Sophie Mutter perform alongside DJs
and video-jockeys (VJs) who project their performances live. The concept
has been deployed in Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Argentina,
Holland, Spain, France and South Korea.
In Germany, Deutsche Grammophon engages music lovers with two
innovative mobile applications: an immersive Beethoven’s
Ninth
Symphony
and Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
. The first makes it possible to listen
and find out about four different versions of the
Ninth Symphony
through
information on the work, parts and comments by experts and famous
conductors; the other makes it possible to listen to a version of Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
side by side with the
Recomposed
version re-worked by
composer Max Richter.
In France, UMG is equipped with a ten-person “Back Catalogue” team
whose role is to foster knowledge and enjoyment of the works of all
of the artists that comprise the repertoire of the group’s various labels
on a daily basis. This is how the anthologies of prestigious French
and international artists came about (Jacques Brel, Barbara, Georges
Brassens, the Rolling Stones etc.). It would not be possible to unlock
the potential of this exceptional heritage were it not for the existence
of the “bunker”, where all of the tapes produced dating back several
generations are archived, and the work of digitizing and preserving this
heritage undertaken by the studios called upon by UMG.
UMG is the owner of the celebrated EMI Archives, which constitute one
of the most beautiful repositories of music, instruments, equipment and
other artefacts in the world. There are projects underway to protect,
develop and enhance objects of scientific, cultural or historic importance
so that today’s and future generations have access to them. Projects
currently underway or scheduled by EMI Archives include the exhibition
of unpublished Motown label photographs and the Memories on Film
project, which immortalizes in video accounts relating to the rich history
of the label, its artists and its studios. An “EMI authentication seal”
guarantees the provenance of historic photographs and other artefacts.
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Non-Financial Indicators Handbook 2014