Impala: indie champs to kingmakers.

The journey from obscure European indie trade organisation to potential kingmaker in one of the biggest music deals in history has taken Impala just seven years.

It can be traced from the formation of the association in April 2000, just a few months after Time Warner and EMI reached their $20bn joint venture deal to fold EMI's music business into Warner Music. This was the first of the proposed super mergers, with the majors exploring ways to move from five to four.

Immediately, Impala spotted that one of its key purposes would be as a guardian of anti-trust issues. Fearing the Warner/EMI merger would put the squeeze on the indies and also lead to a lack of cultural diversity - something the indie group sets great store by - it challenged the merger.

Its complaints to the then EC competition commissioner Mario Monti helped scupper the deal, although over 2003 EMI and Warner continued to examine ways of merging before Edgar Bronfman bought Warner that November.

Impala also played a huge role in providing the EC competition authorities with evidence that the music market would be adversely affected when Sony and Bertelsmann announced, in November 2003, their plans to merge their music businesses. To the surprise ...