We catch up on this week’s music publishing news, from key deals and signings to new hires, legislation and more.
Deals & Acquisitions
The Killers sell music publishing catalog to Eldridge, including hits like Mr. Brightside and Human (MBW)`
Las Vegas rock band The Killers have sold their pre-2020 music publishing catalog, including hits like Human and Mr. Brightside to Eldridge, a holding company with a network of businesses across entertainment, finance, technology, and real estate.
Primary Wave strikes ‘multi-million dollar deal’ to buy music publishing catalog and master royalty stream from rock band Disturbed (MBW)
Described by Primary Wave as a “multi-million-dollar deal”, the catalog encompasses the Grammy nominated band’s publishing and master income stream for their compositions and masters across their entire career to date.
Sony/ATV Acquires River House Artists Catalogue of Country Works (Billboard)
Sony/ATV Nashville has acquired the catalogue for country specialist River House Artists, which includes Luke Combs’ hits “Forever After All,” “Beautiful Crazy,” “When It Rains It Pours,” and “Lovin’ On You.”
Reservoir inks joint venture with Atlantic Screen Music to invest in film score & soundtrack projects (MBW)
New York-based Reservoir has entered into a joint venture agreement with UK-based film score and soundtrack production company Atlantic Screen Music, which will see the two firms invest in a series of film score and soundtrack projects together.
Electric Feel partners with Universal Music Publishing for European launch (CMU)
Universal Music Publishing has signed a new deal with Electric Feel Entertainment focused on expanding the latter’s European operations through the creation of Electric Feel Publishing Europe.
Signings
Sony/ATV signs Kolidescopes to global deal (Music Week)
Kolidescopes’ Dan Dare and John Courtidis are a songwriting and producing team known for co-writing the hit single Head & Heart by Joel Corry and MNEK. It peaked at No.1 and has passed a million sales.
Concord Music Publishing Signs Chris La Corte To New Hillary Lindsey Joint Venture, Hang Your Hat Music (Music Row)
Chris La Corte is the first signing to a new joint venture between Hillary Lindsey and Concord Music Publishing, Hang Your Hat Music. Jake Gear has also joined Hang Your Hat Music as GM/Exec. VP and previously worked with Lindsey at BMG.
Launches & New Ventures
Nashville’s Hillary Lindsey Gives Writers a Place to Hang Their Hat With Concord Co-Venture (Billboard)
Hang Your Hat, the new Nashville-based venture between Grammy and CMA Award-winning songwriter Hillary Lindsey and Concord Music Publishing, has begun staffing up with both executives and writers.
LiveXLive Launches Music Publishing Division (Billboard)
LiveXLive Media, the entertainment live streaming platform, is launching a music publishing division, which will be helmed by industry veteran David Schulhof, who joined the company last year as chief development officer and is now president of the new operation.
Peloton rival Echelon launches fully-licensed music offering for fitness classes (MBW)`
Seattle-headquartered MediaNet, which was acquired by SOCAN in 2016, will provide licensing, catalog, and rights management services for Echelon through its MediaNet Enterprise product integration, which allows music applications to access over 85 million tracks.
Facts & Figures
Warner Music Ends Pandemic Year With Solid Digital Growth, Flat Overall Revenue (Billboard)
“We are confident in our long-term growth prospects,” says CFO Eric Levin, “particularly as the areas of our business that have been most impacted by COVID return to normal.”
Publishers Quarterly: Sony/ATV Again Tops Hot 100 and Radio Rankings (Billboard)
Sony/ATV continued its reign from July to September, ruling both the Hot 100 Songs and Top Radio Airplay charts for the second quarter in a row.
Finance & Investment
Why are so many artists selling off their song catalogues to faceless companies? (Global News)
What’s going on? Why would artists give up control over their music? The money, obviously. But that’s only part of it.
Following IPO, Round Hill Music Raises Another $291M to Acquire More Music (Billboard)
After raising $282 million from an initial public offering, Round Hill Music has successfully received another $291 million in equity commitments from the private placement market, bringing total fundraising this month to $573 million.
AmplifyX Goes Live, Democratizing Access to Music Investment (Yahoo! finance)
Artists are already signing on with AmplifyX, a platform allowing people to directly invest in both established and emerging artists.
Billboard Pro Spotlight Live Virtual Event: Songs for Sale (Billboard)
On Dec. 3, the Billboard Pro Spotlight Series tackles the current explosion in music publishing deals with “Songs For Sale,” a new Deep Dive package and virtual event featuring guests such as Primary Wave founder and CEO Larry Mestel, Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited founder Merck Mercuriadis, Anthem Entertainment Group CEO Helen Murphy and more.
Hirings & Promotions
Concord Names Brian Egan Exec VP Strategic Planning & Advancement (Billboard)
In his new role, Egan will lead projects focused on industry analysis and competitive assessments as a foundation for Concord’s long-term planning.
Sony/ATV UK promotes Sarah Lockhart to head of A&R (Music Week)
In her newly elevated role, Lockhart leads the UK division’s revamped A&R department, which has a team of 12, and oversees the publisher’s roster.
Charlene Brown to chair Ivors Academy Ethics Committee (Music Week)
The Ivors Academy has appointed Charlene Brown, founder and director of people intelligence company Howlett Brown, as chair of its new Ethics Committee.
Christopher Hicks appointed Chief Innovation Officer at QC Media Holdings (MBW)
Hicks will focus on identifying, developing, and launching new partnerships and services across Film, TV, Digital, Music Master, Music Publishing and Technology.
Amy Cranford promoted to SVP, Administration at Sony/ATV Nashville (MBW)
In her new position, Cranford is responsible for overseeing Sony/ATV’s administration initiatives to better support its songwriters, including the client portal SCORE and its app, and she will continue leading the company’s audit team.
Royalties & CMOs
TikTok & ICE agreement: PRS, GEMA, peerusic, Downtown & more in multi-year licensing deal (Music Week)
As well as the 333,000-plus rightsholders covered by the partnership between PRS For Music, STIM and GEMA, the ICE Core also includes repertoire of IMRO and the independent publishing giants Concord, Downtown/Songtrust and Peer Music.
CISAC and publishers come together to launch harmonised music cue sheets (CISAC)
A project to harmonise music cue sheets, an initiative that will bring significant benefits to everyone involved in music productions for audiovisual works, has now been completed.
What Q3’s Music Industry Numbers Tell Us About the Future of Royalties (Synchblog)
Recent figures released by the majors are giving the industry reason for hope, though societies warn that we may not know the extent of the pandemic’s impact for some time.
ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus among investors in Audoo’s £5.2 million funding round (Music Week)
London-based Audoo has raised £5.2 million in less than 10 weeks in an investment round backed by Edinv, ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and existing investors including Tileyard London.
Equitable remuneration takes centre stage at UK streaming economics inquiry (Music Ally)
This morning saw the first two oral evidence sessions in the British Parliament’s inquiry into the economics of music streaming, focusing on musicians and their advocates. Two words loomed large: equitable remuneration.
US industry’s black box has ‘several hundred million dollars (Music Ally)
The Music Technology Policy blog has been combing through filings from the Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC), which represents the streaming services in all this.
IMPEL expands into Japan with the addition of NexTone to its membership (MBW)
IMPEL, the international collective licensing agency representing digital publishing rights, has expanded its reach into the Japan with the addition of NexTone to its membership.
Legal
Wixen Music Publishing Hits Triller With $50M Copyright Lawsuit (Billboard)
Wixen claims that Triller has been “willfully infringing” its musical compositions by allowing its users to include them in videos without authorization or compensation.
No Encore for Music Publishers Who Say COVID-19 Wrecked Copyright Trial (Billboard)
Music publishers were expecting to win huge damages in a five-year copyright battle over concert recordings. Did a health pandemic ruin these plans?
Interesting Reads
“Metadata is a Love Note to the Future”: 5 Takeaways From DDEX’s Creator Credit Summit (Synchblog)
Themes included the different elements of creator credits & metadata, tools to assist in their proper use, entering credits in the recording process & more.
The State of Music Synchronization With Synchtank Founder Joel T. Jordan, Part 1 (Chartmetrics)
In Part 1 of this two-part episode, we get into Jordan’s punk beginnings in the business, and weave a narrative through the world of music licensing that translates his punk rock, do-it-yourself ethos into a sector with surprisingly similar DNA: technology.
Music Groups Again Pressure Congress For Pandemic Relief: ‘More Must Be Done’ (Billboard)
A coalition of music industry groups including the RIAA, NMPA and Artist Rights Alliance today (Nov. 23) sent the latest in a string of recent letters to congressional leaders, urging them to provide additional government assistance to music industry workers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Time to move beyond the song economy (MIDiA Research)
We have a model that works for rights holders that is fuelled by artists and songwriters. Now we need an additional, parallel, model that works for artists.
Taylor Swift’s Masters: What Shamrock Gets for $300 Million, Why It Matters, and What’s Next (Variety)
What the fund? The rights to the first six albums by Taylor Swift, arguably the most commercially popular artist in the world, recently were sold to a private equity firm for a whopping $300 million. Was it a fair price?
Merck Mercuriadis: ‘I want to change the way the songwriter sits in the economic equation’ (Legrand Network)
A few weeks ago, when asked if he was interested in assets from Kobalt, Merck Mercuriadis responded with a smile. Earlier in the conversation, he said, “We are in the middle of making the biggest acquisition that we’ve ever made, literally times five!”
Understanding the Implications of Article 17 Copyright Reform: A Conversation with Rasty Turek, CEO of Pex (Music Biz)
We recently sat down for a broad overview on Article 17 with Rasty Turek, Founder and CEO of Pex, to discuss the ins and outs of the legislation ahead of these events.
New social enterprise launched to grow The F-List initiative (CMU)
A new social enterprise has launched today to support and expand on The F-List directory, an online resource that lists artists, bands, songwriters and composers who identify as female.
Music is now a ‘full blown category’ on Twitch, as it recruits for Head of Artist Relations (MBW)
Amazon-owned live streaming platform Twitch has launched a new personalized Music Directory on its platform, as part of what it calls “a discoverability experiment”.
Music Publishing Job Spotlight
Royalty Manager – Primary Wave Music Publishing (New York)
Primary Wave are looking for an enthusiastic colleague with a dedicated work ethic and a sharp mind who is eager to explore all aspects related to music-related royalties.
Data & Systems Analyst – Primary Wave Music Publishing (New York)
Primary Wave are looking for an enthusiastic colleague with a dedicated work ethic and a sharp mind who will be responsible for compiling and analyzing all royalty transactional and contract data.
Director of Music Catalog Analysis – Vezt (Los Angeles)
Qualified candidates should have a music publishing or PRO/finance background with experience in valuing music catalogs internationally, across all income streams.
Check out more available positions here or get in touch to post a free job listing.
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