Sir Richard Branson is considering buying back Virgin Records 40 years after founding the business that created the foundations for his global multi billion pound empire. Universal Music, the world’s biggest recorded music company, is apparently considering a sale of Virgin Records in order to clear the decks for regulators to give the go ahead to its £1.2 billion deal for EMI, whose acts include Coldplay and The Beatles.

Richard Branson confirmed his interest in a succinct tweet: “Looking into buying back Virgin Records – a wonderful opportunity to recreate a dynamic independent label.” It is easy to read too much into a snapshot tweet, but nevertheless you sense a sentimental, nostalgic undertone in those few brief words. There is little sentiment in business, but I wonder if having achieved all he has, Richard Branson wants to buy back a little piece of nostalgia from his past?!! Having read his autobiography, of all his diverse projects over the years, Virgin Records seems to be the one he holds closest to his heart.

When Richard Branson sold Virgin Records to Thorn EMI for £510 million in 1992 to help fund Virgin Atlantic’s battle with British Airways, you felt the pain of a father giving up his child for adoption. Richard Branson’s attachment to Virgin Records appears to go well beyond the balance sheet. It must do – why on earth would the business tycoon want to go back into the music recording business at a time of great decline in music sales revenues, in the era of the free digital download?!! However this interest in buying back Virgin Records must surely go beyond nostalgia and sentimentality? Presumably this great entrepreneur, brilliant marketer and astute businessman has a devilishly cunning plan up his Wizard’s sleeve with regard to revolutionizing music sales!! Or perhaps, he’s still that 20 year old romantic hippy at heart, who like millions of his Virgin customers has an irrational love of music, that defies common sense!!

Richard Branson formed Virgin Records in 1970 at the age of twenty, as a record mail order business targetting the student market. He modestly called the company “Virgin” because he was a complete novice in business……..but not for long!! The following year, after the 1971 postal strike threatened to destroy his mail order business model, Branson opened his first record shop on Oxford Street in London. As the music retail business took off, he then launched the Virgin Records label in 1972, allowing artists to record at his 17th century Cotswold house called “The Manor” in Shipton-on-Cherwell near Oxford, which he had bought for a mere pittance. The rest is history – Virgin Records’ first release was Mike Oldfield’s innovative and groundbreaking “Tubular Bells” in 1973, which went on to be a global multi million seller. In 1977, he pulled off a PR coup when Virgin Records signed the Sex Pistols after they were controversially sacked by EMI.

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