{"id":2291407,"date":"2026-02-20T18:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T18:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2291407"},"modified":"2026-02-20T18:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T18:38:14","slug":"universal-music-virgin-close-775-million-deal-to-buy-downtown-in-major-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/universal-music-virgin-close-775-million-deal-to-buy-downtown-in-major-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Music, Virgin Close $775 Million Deal to Buy Downtown In Major Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div role=\"presentation\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0126946\/\">Universal Music Group<\/a> and its <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0979160\/\">Virgin Music Group<\/a> subsidiary\u2019s acquisition of <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0801201\/\">Downtown Music<\/a> has officially been completed, the companies announced Friday, about a week after EU competition authorities approved the deal last Friday.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0659679\/\">Downtown<\/a>\u2019s CEO <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0887852\/\">Pieter van Rijn<\/a> was appointed Chief Operating Officer following the deal, and he will report to <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0103421\/\">Virgin<\/a>\u2019s co-CEOs Nat Pastor and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm9217958\/\">Jt Myers<\/a>. Meanwhile, Downtown founder <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0435761\/\">Justin Kalifowitz<\/a> confirmed he\u2019d be stepping down from the company, while <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000921\/\">Andrew Bergman<\/a> will take on a senior advisory role, the companies said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm8628107\/\">Pieter<\/a>\u2019s appointment signals our intent to bring these businesses together thoughtfully and strategically,\u201d <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm5579463\/\">Pastor<\/a> said in a statement. \u201cThis is about making both Virgin Music Group and Downtown even better \u2014 preserving their distinct strengths while increasing the investment, technology and global resources available to independent entrepreneurs. Pieter\u2019s experience and leadership make him the right person to help guide us forward.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Universal Music Group and its Virgin Music Group subsidiary\u2019s acquisition of Downtown Music has officially been completed, the companies announced Friday, about a week after EU competition authorities approved the deal last Friday. Downtown\u2019s CEO Pieter van Rijn was appointed Chief Operating Officer following the deal, and he will report to Virgin\u2019s co-CEOs Nat Pastor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2291408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-2291407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Universal-Music-Virgin-Close-775-Million-Deal-to-Buy-Downtown.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2291407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2291409,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2291407\/revisions\/2291409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2291408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2291407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2291407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2291407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}