Publishing Catch-Up: Ivors Academy Reveals £500m Song Streaming Data Gap, Pershing Square Buys Initial 7.1% Stake in UMG & More

We catch up on the latest music publishing news, from key deals and signings to new hires, legislation and more.

Deals & Acquisitions

Pershing Square buys initial 7.1% stake in UMG for $2.8bn (Music Ally)
Pershing Square boss Bill Ackman has also secured the right to buy up to 2.9% more of UMG by 9 September “through funds which he manages or in which he holds the majority of economic interest, based on the same valuation” according to Vivendi.

Fleetwood Mac Songbird Christine McVie Sells Catalog to Hipgnosis (Billboard)
Hipgnosis Songs continues its acquisition spree by snapping up the music catalog of Christine McVie, one of the principal writers and vocalists of Fleetwood Mac.

Round Hill acquires catalogue of Yes guitarist and film composer Trevor Rabin (Music Week)
The acquisition includes 3,528 film cues and songs covering tracks from across Rabin’s career as a songwriter and film score composer.

Tempo Music buys into music catalog of Twenty One Pilots’ singer-songwriter Tyler Joseph (MBW)
In addition, says Tempo, the deal sees a new “strategic alliance” launched between Joseph and long-term manager, Chris Woltman, working alongside Tempo on other potential investments.

Royalties & CMOs

Black box disorder: Ivors Academy research reveals £500m streaming data gap (Music Week)
The Ivors Academy has published a new report estimating the size of the global song streaming data gap – streaming royalties for songs that are unallocated or misallocated due to missing or incomplete data.

PopArabia launches ESMAA, a music rights entity to facilitate licensing in UAE and Gulf (Yahoo)
ESMAA works broadly with both global rights holders and regional businesses to provide Gulf markets with the ability to license music domestically for the first time.

US songwriter groups at loggerheads with government and majors over “frozen mechanicals” (Music Ally)
We’ve seen in the UK how effective a grassroots artist campaign can be with #BrokenRecord, and now another to keep an eye on is the #FrozenMechanicals campaign, which appears to be slowly picking up steam.

Finance & Investment

Reservoir goes public on Nasdaq (Music Week)
The independent music company finalised its business combination with Roth CH Acquisition II, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) formed by Roth Capital Partners and Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Hipgnosis’s Christine McVie deal exposes publishing tensions (Music Ally)
Is Hipgnosis ruffling the feathers of the industry’s biggest publishers, or are they simply keen to ensure people understand the intricacies of shared rights ownership? Or, indeed, a little bit of both.

How future proof is the current evaluation of music copyrights? (MBW)
Persona Rights IP (PRIP) is often not included in music copyright deals (nor in the rights of major music companies). Without these rights, legacy rights holders cannot benefit from new revenue opportunities in the Metaverse, mixed reality or around NFT collectables.

On The Money: Thomas St John (Music Week)
“It’s a great time to consider selling your catalogue as the number of buyers in the market has grown exponentially over the past several years,” says Thomas St John’s US director and global head of royalties Jon Payne.