Brussels is expected to restart its formal investigation into the validity of the SonyBMG music joint venture today, after rival record companies submitted six years of sales data to the European Commission.

The resumption, after a three-month delay, means that the Commission will have to decide whether to approve the venture by the second week in October, in a ruling that will have implications for any tie-up between Warner Music and EMI. A combined Warner-EMI would have a similar market share to SonyBMG.

The Commission has concentrated on searching for evidence of tacit collusion between the four remaining music majors. Tacit collusion involves a lack of competition that in turn means that all the companies in a market set similar prices.

The European Commission has demanded pricing information from each of the companies across the European Economic Area’s 15 countries and for each of their top 20 retailers. That exercise took so long that the Commission had to stop the clock on the normal four-month study on March 23, three weeks after it had begun.

The depth of the Commission’s inquiry is good news for a Warner-EMI tie-up because it will be difficult for regulators to change their minds a few months later and say that there was tacit pricing collusion.

With European officials reluctant to set a clear precedent for Warner-EMI, it remains possible that they could conclude there would a risk of collusion in the future.

It is the second time that Brussels has had to examine the SonyBMG merger. Last year a European court ruled that the Commission’s original approval was not properly reasoned.

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