British music company EMI will buy out shares in Toshiba-EMI to revive CD sales and grab a bigger share of the world's second-biggest music market.
The deal may help EMI, the world's third-biggest music company by sales, improve earnings at Toshiba-EMI, its Japanese joint venture, which has suffered from shrinking demand for CDs and a rapid shift to digital song downloads.
Toshiba-EMI said sales in the year ended in March totalled 46.6 billion yen ($396.5 million), and that revenue has been falling in recent years.
The sale marks an end to Toshiba's foray into the music content business that has lasted over 50 years.
Toshiba's sale of its 45 per cent stake in the Tokyo-based music firm should be finalised between April and September of 2007, and it will generate an extraordinary profit of 13 billion yen for Toshiba in the year starting next April, Toshiba said.
Toshiba-EMI said it would keep its current company brand name for the time being. Toshiba said EMI approached it with the buyout plan earlier this month, as the Japanese electronics giant is reshuffling its hundreds of subsidiaries to shore up its earnings.