Business
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LL Cool J‘s Rock the Bells hip-hop platform announced a $15 million Series B raise led by Raine Ventures, Irving Azoff of Iconic Artists Group and Paramount Global, with participation from Amex Ventures, Wildcat Capital Management and Capstar Ventures. Additional investment came from ASK Capital, North Island, AME Cloud Ventures and XO Capital. The funds will be used to scale the business, including by creating more long-form content projects, launching new retail projects, expanding to the European Union, growing the annual Rock the Bells Festival and launching new experiential events. Under the deal, Rock the Bells and Paramount Global have signed a multi-year first-look deal covering feature films and scripted and unscripted content as well as the opportunity to live-stream the 2023 Rock the Bells Festival. Additionally, they will partner on developing co-branded merchandise opportunities. Paramount Global will also provide marketing support for Rock The Bells content, experiences and activations.
ICM Crescendo Music Royalty Fund acquired the master royalty income of a catalog of songs owned by High Society Management, including several by Latin star Anuel AA such as “Sola (Remix)”, “Soldado Y Profeta (Remix)” and “Nacimos Pa Morir” featuring Jory Boy.
Snapchat struck new music licensing deals with UnitedMasters, BUMA/STEMRA, SUISA Digital Licensing AG — which includes the repertoire of SUISA (Switzerland), AKKA/LAA (Latvia), Albautor (Albania), Armauthor (Armenia), Autodia (Greece), COMP (Pakistan), EAÜ (Estonia), GCA (Georgia), LATGA (Lithuania), SOZA (Slovakia), Abramus Digital (Brazil), Soundreef (Italy) — and multiple direct-licensing publishers for its Snapchat Sounds library.
Independent Latin music label The Wave Music Group — founded in 2021 by Angelo Torres and Caleb Calloway — signed a long-term distribution agreement with Capitol Music Group (CMG). The first music to be released under the deal comes from Puerto Rican rapper and songwriter Young Miko, who dropped the first single under the agreement, “Lisa,” in March. CMG will provide The Wave Music Group with a number of services in support of its releases, supplementing the label’s in-house functions.
Reactional Music — which has developed a rules-based music engine that allows any music to be brought into a video game and interact in real time with the game’s visuals, sound and more — closed a pre-Series A funding round led by mobile music games publisher Amanotes and early-stage VC fund Butterfly Ventures. The round was also supported by several angel investors, including former Mediatonic chairman, Red Octane CEO and Take 2 Interactive CEO Kelly Sumner. The funds will be used to deliver the Reactional beta platform and SDK for developers, continue its music licensing operations and scale the Reactional team. Reactional is currently at work on several pilot projects, while the Reactional engine is now being used in a commercially-available game for the Playstation 5 and Playstation VR2; it has also struck multiple music rights agreements, including with Hipgnosis Song Management. The platform is expected to go live this year.
PRS for Music announced a partnership with music rights and metadata management software platform Orfium to expand PRS’s licensing coverage to music users in Africa. Under the deal, Orfium will license the PRS repertoire and provide the underlying technology infrastructure to serve African markets. Coverage provided by Orfium will extend to public performances, radio, cable TV and local and select multi-national online services. The deal will also expand the global reach of PRS’s Major Live Concert Service, a leading royalty collection service for large concerts, making it available for events held throughout Africa. The Orfium partnership will function alongside PRS’s existing agreement with South Africa collecting society SAMRO for its home territories.
SoundExchange announced a new data partnership with music metadata provider Music Story to improve SoundExchange’s creator metadata. The deal is designed to minimize the need for manual claiming and help ensure accuracy in monthly royalty payments. Music Story partner Muso.AI, a verified music credit platform, captures credits, correctly links music creators to their work and spots inconsistencies that impact their rights.
Live events company LiveCo struck a partnership with Park City, Utah-based boutique producing and presenting firm MagicSpace Entertainment to bring the company under the LiveCo umbrella. MagicSpace has launched tours including Simone Biles in the Gold Over America Tour, Rain – A Tribute to the Beatles, Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, A Magical Cirque Christmas and Alton Brown Live. LiveCo, which launched at the top of 2023, also boasts partnerships with Icon Concerts, Premier Productions, BASE Entertainment, Rush Concerts, Peachtree Entertainment and Transparent Productions; it also represents talent and productions including Jimmy O. Yang, Criss Angel, Cocomelon Live, Cody Johnson, Jo Koy, Dude Perfect, Zach Bryan, MercyMe, Elevation Worship and Gabriel Iglesias.
Enote, an app that provides a library of interactive sheet music to classical musicians, closed a 10 million euro ($10.97 million) pre-Series A funding round led by Dieter von Holzbrink Ventures (DvH Ventures), the EU’s European Innovation Council (EIC Fund) and the Rudolf Fuchs Family Office. The funds will go toward initiatives that introduce innovations to the app, empower educators and provide more musicians with the opportunity to access the Enote library. There remains an opportunity for angel investors, venture capital funds and family offices to participate in a second closing of the round, which the EIC fund has committed to matching euro for euro.
Web3 company OneOf acquired enterprise rewards and loyalty software company TAP Network, which has developed customized rewards and loyalty solutions for clients including Warner Music Group, Brave and Uber. The acquisition allows for the integration of TAP Network’s loyalty software IP with OneOf’s mass-consumer Web3 technology framework. The resulting Web3-powered tech stack, dubbed OnePlatform, will provide white-labeled turnkey loyalty, commerce and data solutions for enterprise clients in entertainment, media, finance, retail, travel, consumer packaged goods, telecom and more.
SoundCloud and Feature.fm formed a strategic partnership to provide exclusive resources and benefits related to Feature.fm’s marketing tools — including smartlinks and pre-saves — for SoundCloud artists. The benefits, which will become available next month, will include perks and discounts from Feature.fm and provide SoundCloud’s “Next Pro” tier of artists with a free plan and free ad credits, while providing artists in its “Next” tier with discounted pricing. As part of the deal, Feature.fm will introduce a new entry-level pricing plan that will be made available to all SoundCloud artists for the first 90 days.
Turntable LIVE acquired fellow music-centered social platform JQBX. The JQBX brand, domain and community will continue with special features at www.JQBX.fm. The acquisition follows the announcement of Turntable LIVE’s $7 million seed round.
Revelator, which provides digital IP infrastructure to music companies including royalty accounting, distribution and analysis, announced an expansion to Japan under a new partnership with Japanese music tech agency PRTL. Under the deal, Revelator will leverage PRTL head Taishi Fukuyama‘s “expertise to bring its innovative Web2 and Web3 solutions to a market that is experiencing rapid streaming growth and is wildly enthusiastic about NFTs,” according to a press release.
EVEN, a blockchain-enabled platform that allows artists to sell their music directly to fans in exchange for exclusive perks before uploading the music to streaming platforms, announced a $2.2 million funding round led by CSA Partners with participation from gener8tor, VC414, gAngels, Daniel Rotman, Adie Akuffo-Afful, Donte Murry and Ogo.
A new lawsuit claims that GloRilla used unlicensed samples from a decades-old New Orleans hip-hop song in her hit songs “Tomorrow” and “Tomorrow 2.”
The case, filed Wednesday in Louisiana federal court, alleges that GloRilla’s tracks “misappropriated many of the recognizable and key protected elements” from “Street of Westbank,” a 1994 song by the group Dog House Posse.
The complaint is light on specifics, but claims that GloRilla copied many elements from the earlier song, including “musical arrangements, percussion tracks, synthesized orchestration, including but not limited to piano, cello, violin, contrabass, and drum set, and tone and melody.”
Beyond the sample itself, the lawsuit says GloRilla’s songs also “mimic and copy the arrangement of ‘Street of Westbank’ by the choice of the instrumentation accompanying the rap lyrics, the choice of when the instruments drop out and reenter and what instruments drop in and reenter.”
A rep for GloRilla did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations.
While GloRilla broke out with “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” her biggest hit to date is “Tomorrow 2” – a remix featuring Cardi B that reached No. 9 on the Hot 100 in October and ultimately spent 22 weeks on the chart.
Based on a comparison of the two songs, the alleged sample appears to be the first few notes of “Street of Westbank,” which are then looped throughout the song; a similar-sounding sequence appears to be looped throughout GloRilla’s song. But the extent to which those similarities actually constitute any violation of copyright law will be litigated in court.
Listen to both songs here:
Read the entire lawsuit here:
Livestream concert start-up Mandolin shut down on Monday after its business struggled to survive following the resumption of in-person concerts.
Mandolin launched in the spring of 2020, alongside over two dozen similar platforms, when widespread COVID-19 lockdowns forced in-person experiences online. In 2021, the company raised $12 million from venture capital firms including Mark Benioff’s TIME Ventures to hire more staff to support its mobile version Mandolin Live+ and it to fund the acquisition of competitor NoonChorus.
Mandolin’s chief executive Mary Kay Huse, a former Salesforce executive, aimed for Mandolin Live+ to become a companion app to live concerts, allowing fans who couldn’t make it in person to watch the event live at home — just as fans of a sports team might, but with more interactive features. However, on Monday, the company said it was closing its doors and gave little context.
“We are sad to announce that after 3 incredible years of connecting artists and fans more authentically through digital experiences, we are officially closing down our product and business operations,” a statement on Mandolin’s website reads.
“We’d like to sincerely thank our clients and partners for their belief in our mission and the time spent helping us develop a platform that truly empowered artists to own their fan relationships. Though we can no longer lead the charge, we firmly believe market power will continue to shift toward better supporting artists in this endeavor and we are all so appreciative of the feedback, faith and validation you’ve provided over the years to get us this far.”
A lawsuit filed against Afroman by a group of Ohio police officers after they raided his home is “nothing short of absurd,” the American Civil Liberties Union says – and a clear threat to his First Amendment rights.
In a motion filed Wednesday, the activist group asked an Ohio court to immediately dismiss the case, which claims that Afroman (real name Joseph Forman) caused the officers “emotional distress” by publicizing images of the guns-drawn raid on his home. The ACLU called it “a meritless effort to use a lawsuit to silence criticism.”
“Plaintiffs are a group of law enforcement officers who executed what appears to have been a highly destructive and ultimately fruitless search of a popular musician’s home. Now they find themselves at the receiving end of his mockery and outrage,” the ACLU wrote. “There is nothing the First Amendment protects more jealously than criticism of public officials on a matter of public concern.”
Police raided Afroman’s Ohio home with guns drawn on Aug. 21, smashing down his door and seizing $5,031 in cash and other property. The raid came on a search warrant linked to suspicions of drug trafficking, but no charges were ever filed and the money was later returned.
After the search, Afroman repeatedly posted video and images to social media, using them to express outrage at alleged damage done to his property and at what he viewed as excessive use of force. One video showed officers searching his home under the title “watch cops steal money.” He later used some of those images on t-shirts and other merchandise, including one that compared one of the officers to an obese character from the animated sitcom Family Guy.
Last month, the officers responded by suing the rapper, claiming the posts and merchandise amounted to an unauthorized commercial exploitation of their likeness, as well as an invasion of their privacy. The officers said they had been “subjected to threats, including death threats” because of Afroman’s posts, and had suffered “emotional distress.”
But in Wednesday’s filing, the ACLU said the officers had not come close to making a coherent claim about what Afroman actually did wrong.
“Plaintiffs do not identify the substance of any particular statement in the videos- or for that matter, anywhere else–that they claim is false,” the group wrote. “Instead, the central focus of their complaint is that Mr. Foreman is making money off of his video commentary and related merchandise, and is criticizing Plaintiffs harshly in the process. That is not tortious conduct; it is protected speech.”
As for the accusation about an invasion of privacy, the ACLU called that claim “nothing short of absurd.”
“They were in Mr. Foreman’s home, not their own,” the group wrote. “Nothing about Mr. Foreman’s expression involves matters of plaintiffs’ intimate personal privacy that could be protected by law. To the contrary, his description–and criticism–of their police work is a legitimate matter of public concern.”
An attorney for the officers did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Symphonic Distribution has partnered with Bonsai, a new company that connects artists and fans and opens up new modes of monetization, to give Symphonic artists’ early access to Bonsai tools. This includes “audiograms,” a product that allows artists to send fans an answer to any question as an audio file. The file is then paired with a visual generative artwork, creating an original collectible.
Bonsai touts this marquee product as a fun, interactive way to bridge the gap between artist and fan — and a novel form digital merchandise.
The company launched in 2022 as the brainchild of co-founder and CEO Patrick Sullivan and co-founder and COO Jake Rosenfeld. Sullivan is an entrepreneur best known for founding RightsFlow, which he sold to YouTube in 2011, and Source3, which was purchased by Meta in 2017. Rosenfeld previously headed Correlation Ventures’ New York branch.
Since their launch in 2022, Bonsai has collaborated with 30 rising artists to test out their offerings, including Amir Obè, The Faim, Diara Dylla, Fly By Midnight and The Holdup. The team up with Symphonic marks their first major partnership.
“Bonsai has created a refreshingly simple and extraordinarily useful platform that connects artists with superfans and monetizes a personal, feel-good exchange, in the form of a simple voice memo recording,” says Nick Gordon, chief partnership officer at Symphonic. “We’ve known their team through many huge successes in the past and are proud to introduce our clients to the potential of Bonsai.”
“Symphonic’s ethos is all about helping artists maximize earnings from their music,” adds Jake Rosenfeld, co-founder and COO of Bonsai. “Our values are completely aligned, and we couldn’t be more excited to launch our partnership.”
Independent dance music label Armada Music said on Thursday it acquired the master recording rights of Detroit techno forefather Kevin Saunderson‘s KMS Records and Russian DJ ARTY to launch its new music investment fund focused on dance music.
The fund named BEAT–which stands for Best Ever Acquired Tracks–launches with $100 million in debt and financing from Pinnacle Financial Partners, which Armada says will be deployed over the next two years.
Launching into the redhot music IP investment market, Armada’s BEAT aims to capitalize on investments in a genre that has so far gotten less attention than others, like pop and classic rock.
A growing number of funds have launched in the past 18-months focused on genres like indie, Latin music and production music, aiming to use in-house expertise on a specific genre to find ways to make catalogs generate greater returns for the artists and rights holders.
“BEAT is in a unique position to add relevance to those tracks through creative additions, best practices in exploitation setup, and marketing methods and communication channels within the bigger (Armada) organization,” says Armada Music chief executive Maykel Piron.
BEAT says it is focused on acquiring catalogs that fall under the category of dance, including subgenres like techno, house, electronic dance music (EDM) and others. EDM alone is estimated to present a $9.5 billion market opportunity, growing to more than $20 billion in the next decade, according to a report by research firm Future Market Insights.
“We are seeing folks who are trying to be smarter, and one way to do that is to arbitrage certain genres,” says Matt Rosenberg, head of media finance at Monroe Capital. “It unlocks the investment ecosystem for more artists.”
Attached to Armada, BEAT will tap into the genre’s leading record label for “data on trends, creative resources, exploitation models (and) new artists,” Piron says.
“We are in a unique position in that we know everything on older catalogs since we have built one over the last 20 years through Armada,” Piron says. Armada has acquired catalogs from artists and dance labels, including Midtown Records, United Recordings and Combined Forces. “BEAT has 100% control over the exploitation and re-exploitation of the acquired catalogs.”
Saunderson made his name with a string of eight Top 10s between 1988-94, including “Good Life,” “Big Fun,” “Ain’t Nobody Better” and “Do You Love What You Feel” and others. The catalog of KMS, which Saunderson helped found over 30 years ago, includes Saunderson’s “Good Life” and “Big Fun,” recorded with Inner City.
“In the post-COVID period, we are seeing a huge revival of 90’s dance. Sometimes younger audiences don’t even realize they are dancing to 30-year-old tracks,” Piron says.
With a catalog of newer hits, ARTY is known for dance tracks “Sunrise,” “Save Me Tonight,” “Craving” and “Take Your Time” from between 2018 and 2021. Based in Los Angeles, ARTY has also produced and remixed songs for Skrillex, Armin van Buuren, Halsey and others.
Drake is facing a new copyright lawsuit claiming he used an unlicensed sample from the song of a Ghanaian rapper on his chart-topping 2022 album, Honestly, Nevermind.
In a case filed Tuesday (April 18) in Manhattan federal court, an artist named Obrafour (real name Michael Elliot Kwabena Okyere Darko) claims Honestly, Nevermind track “Calling My Name” features a short clip of a vocal phrase — “Killer cut, blood, killer cut” — that was pulled directly from Obrafour’s earlier song, “Oye Ohene.”
Unlike many such cases, Obrafour claims to have smoking gun evidence: An email from someone at Republic Records seeking to clear the clip. The June 2022 note allegedly admitted that Drake had already “used samples from the above referenced song” and wanted permission to release it.
But according to the lawsuit, Drake’s album and song — complete with the unlicensed sample — were released just nine days later, before Obrafour had a chance to respond to the email.
“Defendants continue to engage in infringement, despite acknowledging that they needed to secure rights and authorization from Obrafour,” lawyers for the Ghanaian rapper wrote. “Defendants have never accounted to, credited, or otherwise compensated Obrafour for their unauthorized use of the copyrighted work.”
Honestly, Nevermind, which was surprise-released on June 17, 2022, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spent 43 weeks on the chart, though “Calling My Name” was less successful; the track debuted at No. 20 on the Hot 100 but dropped off the following week.
According to his lawsuit, Obrafour received an email nine days earlier bearing the subject line: “Drake ‘Darkness’ (working title) contains samples from ‘Oye Ohene’ Ft Tinny written and performed by Obrafour.”
The sender told Obrafour that they were “currently working on a sample clearance for Republic recording artist Drake” and were seeking “consent for both the master rights and publishing rights” to the clip. On June 13, Obrafuour received a second email that read: “Hi confirming you received this email thanks.”
Then he, says, the album dropped.
“Obrafour had not yet responded to the June 8, 2022 clearance email or the follow-up June 13, 2022 clearance email at the point when Drake’s ‘Honestly, Nevermind’ album was released,” his lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Nonetheless, the infringing work is one of the songs appearing on the “Honestly, Nevermind” album, as released to the world by ‘surprise’ on June 17, 2022.”
Reps for Drake and Republic Records did not immediately return requests for comment.
As hundreds of creators, partners and press took their seats for the fifth annual Snap Partner Summit Keynote — delivered by a handful of Snap executives across different fields — a video began to play that called into question how basic the human eye really is.
“What if we could literally see more?” the narration asked. “With Snapchat, we don’t have to settle.”
That idea underlines the many new developments unveiled by Snap on Wednesday (April 19) at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica, Calif., including CEO Evan Spiegel‘s concluding announcement that the company’s innovative chatbot, My AI — which was initially launched exclusively for Snapchat+ subscribers (who now number over 3 million, Spiegel announced) — is now available for free to all of the app’s 750 million monthly active users and can now send and receive its own Snapchats.
Music was on the agenda, too, of course. To kick things off, Snap head of talent development Brooke Berry discussed how musicians are growing their fanbases through the app while also shouting out the Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund, which helps musicians in the United States and India monetize their growth.
While the creator fund was introduced in a Billboard cover story last summer, along with the announcement of Snap’s multi-year partnership with Live Nation, the Keynote also revealed that Snap is doubling down on augmented reality (AR) in music — and that the Live Nation partnership has grown immensely since it was first unveiled.
News on the music front was revealed by Snap head of global AR product strategy Carolina Arguelles Navas, who noted that 85% of Snapchatters already use the app to enhance the live music experience. Her first announcement was to reveal a new integration between Snap and Disguise, a leader in live event visualization and virtual production technology, which will help bring Snap’s AR technology to some of the largest venues around the world. At future shows, fans will be able to see AR visuals that interact and build upon the performer’s on-stage visuals by using the Snapchat camera via Disguise RenderStream. One major artist — Kygo — is already on board, teaming with Snap and Disguise to level up his summer concerts using the company’s experiential AR.
Under the Live Nation partnership, Snap’s AR technology has already been utilized at a dozen festivals, including Electric Daisy Carnival and Lollapalooza, where last year Snapchat launched a handful of new AR features such as its AR Compass, which uses GPS wayfinding to show an interactive 3D map; Friend FindAR, which helps festival attendees find their crew; Festival Planner, which lets fans note must-see sets and share custom schedules; and Lollaland, where last year a virtual purple robot and hot dog could be seen through the Snapchat camera when a user was within the Chicagoland area during the weekend of the festival.
That brings us to Snap’s second major music announcement on Wednesday: Under the Live Nation partnership, the company will now bring the same AR experience to 16 additional festivals worldwide, including Lollapalooza Paris and the United Kingdom’s Reading and Leeds Festivals, with hopes to expand to even more festivals in the future.
Elsewhere at the Keynote, Snap announced it will bring its new augmented reality (AR) Mirrors to retailers, allowing consumers to virtually try on outfits and determine their best fit — which attendees were later invited to try for themselves while being fit for custom MadHappy tees and sweatshirts and yellow Snap-themed Nikes. Additionally, Snapchat filters can now be applied directly to fans’ faces at live sporting events via jumbotrons, creating communal moments of laughter — à la what the so-called “kiss cam” has done for years.
Four months after stepping down as chairman/CEO of Warner Music Nashville (WMN) and assuming the role of chairman emeritus, John “Espo” Esposito is resigning the emeritus title effective immediately.
In an email to the WMN staff Wednesday (April 19), Esposito wrote, “It’s that time of year when I head off to Nantucket to relax and reflect. This summer though, I will be reflecting on my next adventures, as I am stepping down as the Chairman Emeritus of Warner Music Nashville today. I’m so proud of what you’re all achieving as a team. I will always be the biggest champion of this team and the artists we signed and developed together. Keep rocking! See you in the fall.”
Esposito gave no reason for the move. However, when reached by Billboard, he said the change would give him more time to work with the T.J. Martell Foundation for Cancer Research as well as “travels and a chance to see the forest for the trees by taking some time.” In March, Esposito was named the chairman of the board of trustees of Nashville-based T.J. Martell, which is rebounding after an embezzlement scandal. “We got the double whammy of the COVID pandemic and somebody being a bad actor,” said Esposito of T.J. Martell in March. “I felt qualified with my knowledge of the organization and passion for them to do what I could to help get us back on track.”
Last June, when Esposito’s retirement as WMN CEO/chairman was announced, longtime WMN executives Cris Lacy and Ben Kline were elevated to co-presidents in preparation for Esposito transitioning to chairman emeritus status at the start of 2023. In early January, Lacy and Kline were promoted to co-chair/co-presidents.
Under Esposito, who had been at WMN’s helm since 2009 after coming over from WEA Corp. as president/CEO, the division’s market share quadrupled, according to parent company Warner Music Group. The label also said its artists have earned more than 300 gold and platinum RIAA certifications.
When Esposito’s shift to emeritus was announced, Warner Recorded Music CEO Max Lousada said in a statement: “Under Espo’s brilliant guidance over the past 13 years, our Nashville team has built superstar careers, attracted original new voices, innovated in the digital world, and championed the creative community.”
Songwriter and producer David Foster has sold a stake of his writer’s share of performance income for all of his songs to Hipgnosis Songs Capital, a partnership of Hipgnosis Song Management and funding from Blackstone.
Throughout his storied career, Foster has earned 47 Grammy nominations (16 of which were wins), three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song (“I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston for The Bodyguard, “Glory of Love” by Peter Cetera for The Karate Kid, Part II, and “The Prayer” by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli for Quest for Camelot), three Golden Globe nominations (also for “The Prayer” and “Glory of Love” as well as “The Secret of My Success” by Night Ranger for The Secret of My Success) and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Apart from the songs that earned him these accolades, the songwriter has also written songs like “Got To Be Real” by Cheryl Lynn, “After the Love Has Gone” by Earth Wind & Fire, “It’s Falling in Love” by Michael Jackson, “Through the Fire” by Chaka Khan, “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” and “You’re the Inspiration” by Chicago, “St Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion)” by John Parr, “Best of Me” by Cliff Richard, and more tracks from hit-making artists like Andrea Bocelli, Celine Dion, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, Bette Midler, Bryan Adams, Destiny’s Child and Michael Bublé.
In 2011, peermusic purchased a majority stake in Foster’s song catalog. The deal encompassed all of the songwriter’s publishing vehicles — Foster Frees Music, Air Bear Music and One Four Three Music — and his catalog of more than 500 songs. The two had been longtime partners, and the team at peermusic has been administering Foster’s publishing for more than 25 years.
Hipgnosis’ deal with Foster aligns with other recent news from the company, which continues to invest in music IP. This year already, Hipgnosis has also acquired other legendary writers behind the world’s biggest hits, including their purchase of 40 songs from the catalog of Tobias Jesso Jr, this year’s Grammy winner for Songwriter of the Year, and their acquisition of rights from the catalog of TMS, the British writing trio behind “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi. Both deals were announced in February 2023.
Hipgnosis Songs Capital is an investment vehicle established by Hipgnosis in conjunction with Blackstone. In October 2021, the New York-based private equity firm pledged $1 billion to further investment in music IP and holds a majority stake in the venture. HSC is considered separate from Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the London-listed acquirer of music publishing and recording rights. Led by founder and CEO Merck Mercuriadis, the company also includes Hipgnosis Songs Management, which manages Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s catalog.
Mercuriadis says of the deal that “David is recognized globally as one of the greatest songwriters and producers of all time. He is the songwriters’ songwriter and the producers’ producer. David is truly special, and we are delighted to be working with his almost 50 years of incredible songs and to welcome him to the Hipgnosis family.”
Foster adds, “I’m very happy to be joining the Hipgnosis family. I’ve long admired what Merck and his team have built and I trust they will be terrific partners.”