Music and Audio Company Consolidation

HEADLINE (Dec 5 2011): Gibson Acquires KRK, Stanton, and Cerwin-Vega.

I’m not a fan of this. It leads to decreased competition, price controls, and a decrease in innovation. Take a look at the handful of companies that now control a majority of the Music and Pro-Audio world:

HARMAN INTERNATIONAL

1. AKG microphones
2. BSS signal processors
3. Crown amplifiers
4. dbx signal processors
5. Digitech guitar products
6. JBL pro audio
7. Lexicon digital processing
8. Soundcraft mixing consoles
9. Studer mixing consoles

LOUD TECHNOLOGIES

1. Alvarez guitars
2. Ampeg bass guiar amps
3. Crate amplifiers
4. Blackheart guitar amps
5. EAW pro audio
6. Mackie mixing consoles
7. Martin Audio

FENDER MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS CORPORATION

1. Charvel
2. Genz-Benz
3. Gibralter
4. Gretsch
5. Guild
6. Fender
7. Hamer
8. Jackson
9. LP
10. Ovation
11. Sabian
12. Sunn
13. SWR
14. Tacoma
15. Takamine
16. Toca

GIBSON GUITAR CORPORATION

1. Baldwin
2. Epiphone
3. Gibson
4. Kalamazoo
5. Kramer
6. Slingerland
7. Steinberger
8. Tobias
9. Valley Arts
10. Wurlitzer

BOSCH

The Bosch Group is the parent company of Electro-Voice, Telex, Memorex, Dynacord, RTS, and others. It actually has 350 subsidiaries in 60 countries.

NOTEABLE EXCEPTIONS

I salute the following companies, who brave out the free market on their own terms:

1. Ashly signal processing
2. Meyer pro audio
3. DPA microphones
4. Shure microphones
5. Radial Engineering