Sony yesterday agreed to buy German media company Bertelsmann's 50 per cent stake in Sony BMG in a $1.2bn deal that will give the Japanese consumer electronics group control of the world's second-largest record company.

It ends a joint venture formed in 2004 by merging Sony Music and Bertelsmann's BMG as a response to the shock of the internet and digitisation that spread the power of recording and distributing music from the old hands to all comers.

Howard Stringer, Sony chief executive, said the re-born Sony Music would give the group “far more flexibility” to use music in its film and television units, and in electronics like the Playstation and the Sony Ericsson Walkman mobile telephone.