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LONDON — Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favor of passing a special resolution that authorizes the payment of up to 20 million pounds ($25 million) to prospective bidders seeking to acquire the fund’s assets.
The special resolution was approved by 99.9% of the fund’s shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting held in London on Wednesday (Feb. 7), according to a regulatory filing.
It gives Hipgnosis Songs Fund‘s (HSF) board of directors the power to pay a fee capped at £20 million to any prospective bidder or bidders making a “bona fide” offer or offers to acquire one or more of the company’s subsidiaries which own music assets, and/or some of the fund’s music rights on favorable terms. The fee is meant to reduce the risk of making an offer for Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s music catalogs by providing “significant protection” against their due diligence and acquisition costs.
In a statement, Robert Naylor, chairman of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, thanked shareholders “for their continuing support” and said the company’s board “remains focused” on its strategic review, “under which it is looking at all options to deliver shareholder value.”
The London-listed fund, which owns full or partial rights to the song catalogs of artists ranging from Justin Bieber, Neil Young, Bruno Mars, Jimmy Iovine, 50 Cent, Shakira, Blondie, Justin Timberlake, Lindsey Buckingham and many more, hopes that the enticement of a large fee will help draw potential bidders.
In October, shareholders voted against the music royalties fund’s proposed $440 million deal to sell 29 catalogues to Hipgnosis Songs Capital – a partnership between investment giant Blackstone and the fund’s investment adviser Hipgnosis Song Management – citing the lack of an “up-to-date” valuation.
October’s annual meeting of shareholders also saw a majority of investors vote against a resolution “to continue running the fund in its current form” — a so-called “continuation vote” — commencing a six-month countdown for the board to come up with a plan “for the reconstruction, reorganisation, or winding-up of the company.”
That led to the installation of a new executive board with Naylor replacing Andrew Sutch as chairman in November.
Last year wrapped with Hipgnosis lowering the value of its music portfolio following what Naylor described to investors as a strained relationship with its investment advisor, the Merck Mercuriadis-led Hipgnosis Song Management (HSM), over the catalog’s worth.
This year has so far begun on an equally rocky footing with the fund’s board of directors calling into question HSM’s ability to field competitive bids for its assets.
A major sticking point is the investment advisor’s call option, which gives it the right to purchase the company’s portfolio if its contract with the fund is terminated with less than 12 months’ notice, among other scenarios. The fund’s board contends that Hipgnosis Song Management’s call option harms its ability to receive competitive bids.
Last week, Mercuriadis announced that he will be stepping down as chief executive officer of Hipgnosis Song Management to take up a newly created chairman role with Ben Katovsky replacing him as CEO.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s share price was roughly flat at 65 British pence ($0.84) following Wednesday’s extraordinary general meeting.
Reservoir Media reported Tuesday (Nov. 7) that revenue grew by 15% year-over-year to $38.4 million for the second quarter of fiscal 2024, ending Sept. 30, 2023. During the quarter, the independent music company acquired new catalogs like Joe Walsh, Latin music icon Rudy Perez and country writer Brent Maher as well as continued expansion in its Arabic music catalog through its partnership with PopArabia — contributing to its inorganic growth.
This quarter’s rise in revenue, up from $33.3 million in Q2 of fiscal 2023, was mostly thanks to growth in its recorded music division, which was up 22% from last year’s second quarter, and publishing, which was up 8%. Reservoir notes that the growth in recorded music is largely driven by Chrysalis Music (acquired in 2019) and Tommy Boy (acquired in 2021) and partially offset by lower synchronization and film/tv licensing revenue, likely hindered by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Chrysalis’ sprawling catalog of masters includes “Dancing With Myself” by Generation X and “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinead O’Connor, whose catalog saw a 2,885% spike in listenership after her death earlier this quarter. Tommy Boy is home to some of hip-hop’s most pioneering players, including De La Soul, the trio that Reservoir ushered on to streaming services for the first time during Q4 of fiscal year 2023 to a solid monetary boost.
In the publishing sector of their business, Reservoir’s revenue reached $25.9 million, compared to $24.1 million in last fiscal year’s second quarter. The gain was a product of strong results in performance and mechanical revenue in particular. Performance monies were up 47% YoY and mechanical was up 25% YoY. These wins, however, were offset by changes with the Copyright Royalty Board — which regulates publishing royalty rates in the U.S. — Reservoir says, leading to a decrease in digital by $2.1 million which was recognized in the prior year quarter related to the newly affirmed royalty rates for the 2018-2022 period.
The company also signed a handful of award-winning frontline songwriters in the past quarter, including Steph Jones, Rob Ragosta, Cam Becker, Josh Record, and Wé Ani.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a closely watched metric of profitability, was up 24% this quarter to $15.9 million.
Founder and CEO, Golnar Khosrowshahi, says the company is confident in its position, both in the U.S. and emerging markets “We are encouraged by the growing opportunities internationally and welcome recent additions of El Sawareekh and RE Media expanding our presence in the emerging markets,” she says. “We will continue to pursue acquisitions in the U.S. and across the globe, and we have the right team and strategy to close accretive deals enhancing the portfolio and building long term value for the business and our shareholders.”
Jim Heindlmeyer, CFO, says that, as a result of the company’s “consistent progress against our strategic growth plan demonstrates the resilience of our business model and ongoing tailwinds from the growing music industry,” Reservoir is raising both its revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for fiscal 2024. “We are pleased to announce another quarter of strong performance, driven by meaningful top-line growth in both business segments,” he says.
The company’s outlook for fiscal 2024:
Revenue is anticipated to be $133 million-$137 million for the year ending March 31, 2024, with 10% growth at midpoint
Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $50 million-$52 million with 10% growth at midpoint
CTM Outlander has inked a deal with four-time BMI songwriter of the year winner Ross Copperman, including both the acquisition of Copperman’s catalog (via Iris in the Sky with Diamonds) as well as a publishing deal for his future works.
Copperman has had songs recorded by Keith Urban, Tyler Hubbard, Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton & Gwen Stefani, Gabby Barrett, Kenny Chesney & P!nk, Dierks Bentley, Brett Young, Darius Rucker and more. CTM will create new opportunities for Copperman through a creative partnership with SMACKSongs. Copperman was previously with Sony Music Publishing.
As part of the arrangement, CTM Outlander also acquires Copperman’s writer share for songs previously published by Plain Jane, including “Love Ain’t” by Eli Young Band, “Happy Anywhere” by Blake Shelton feat. Gwen Stefani, “Get Along” by Kenny Chesney and “Living” by Dierks Bentley.
Copperman said in a statement, “I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to work alongside remarkable individuals like CTM and SMACK in my new team. CTM’s visionary leadership has already brought us exciting opportunities beyond Country, expanding our horizons. I’ve always held immense respect for SMACK, and I eagerly anticipate the promising collaborations and accomplishments that lie ahead.”
André de Raaff, CEO at CTM Outlander, said, “From the first moment we met Ross we felt his energy, passion and drive for music. His goal is set to break new artists and help creative new opportunities with the ones he’s already been working with. We are here to support him in any type of way and see Ross as somebody that is helping to develop the country music genre into a global genre.”
CTM Outlander is a partnership between the innovative and disruptive Dallas, Texas based Outlander Capital led by Les Ware and Mike McKool and the Dutch-based leading independent music entertainment company CTM, led by industry veteran André de Raaff. CTM Outlander previously acquired Shane McAnally‘s catalog earlier this year, in addition to other SMACKSongs works. In 2022, the CTM Outlander acquired catalogs of Natalie Hemby, Michael Tyler and Ben Burgess.
Mike McKool, director of CTM Outlander, said, “When we created CTM Outlander, we had no specific agenda as far as genre was concerned. It was only after meeting and developing relationships with the songwriting community in Nashville, that we decided to place an emphasis on country music. As we continue to invest and grow our portfolio, Ross is another example of the kind of artist we want to be in business with. We couldn’t be more excited to work with him moving forward, while also furthering our relationship with SMACKSongs.”
Robert Carlton, president of SMACKSongs, added, “SMACK is proud to further our partnership with CTM through this deal. Ross has been one of the premier writers and producers in Nashville over the last decade. We’ve been fortunate to share quite a bit of success with him through co-writes, but feel truly honored that he chose to entrust SMACK with this next chapter of his career.”
Kobalt, the digital-focused publishing administration company, has teamed up with investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Tactical Value to invest more than $700 million into music IP in the next few years. The partnership will see Kobalt managing the creative, sync, licensing, administration and investment services for the copyrights that are purchased.
The deal, which was advised by Goldman Sachs, marks Kobalt’s return to managing investment for outside capital. Previously, Kobalt had two funds it worked with under Kobalt Capital, its investment management arm, both of which were sold in recent years. Kobalt’s first fund contained over 33,000 songs, including songs recorded by Lindsey Buckingham, Steve Winwood, the B52’s, 50 Cent, George Benson, Bonnie McKee, Nelly and Skrillex. It sold to Hipgnosis Songs Fund in late 2020 for a price tag of $323 million or 18.3 times the net publishers share, and it realized a $20 million gain for Kobalt. While it was the biggest sale for Kobalt at the time, the first fund represented less than 30% of Kobalt’s IP holdings at the time.
The second fund, Kobalt Music Royalty Fund II, sold to an investment group comprising of KKR and Dundee Partners the following year for $1.1 billion. To manage the investments of the royalty fund as well as other IP previously acquired by KKR, the partners formed a platform Chord Music Partners, which tapped Kobalt Music Publishing to continue to handle publishing administration for the works. The fund is believed to have included the SONGS publishing catalog, Insieme Music catalog, which it acquired from Glassnote, and the David Hodges catalog.
Since that sale, Kobalt has not worked with outside money for catalog acquisition.
Outside of Kobalt Capital, the publishing administrator, helmed by chief executive Laurent Hubert, has made a number of other major changes in its business. In 2021, it also sold off AWAL, the artist services company and distributor to some of music’s most successful independent talent, and its neighboring rights operations to Sony. In September 2022, following reports of its first-ever profitable year, Kobalt sold a majority stake to Francisco Partners.
“Kobalt is a pioneer in investing in music, increasing the value of copyrights, and creating music as a viable asset class,” says Hubert. “Morgan Stanley Tactical Value’s trust in Kobalt is a testament to our platform and leadership in the music industry. We are proud to form this unique partnership.”
“Morgan Stanley Tactical Value has profound respect for songwriters and the immense value of their art,” said Cameron Smalls, managing director, Morgan Stanley Tactical Value. “We are thrilled to partner with the leading creator-first publisher that is a pioneer in maximizing royalty collections for songwriters and rightsholders. Together with Kobalt’s infrastructure and deep commitment to bettering the music industry, we are excited about our partnership and the opportunities ahead.”
Warner Chappell Music recently wrapped a Las Vegas-based songwriting camp, featuring 300 songwriters, artists and producers from around the world. The annual event was held in partnership with YouTube Music, Warner Records, Atlantic Records, and RCA Records, along with other label sponsors and included artists like Chlöe, Bebe Rexha, Yng Lvcus, P2J, The Proof, Lydia Night, Murda Beatz, Tay Keith, Amy Allen, Ian Kirkpatrick, Nova Wav, Benson Boone, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock.
Primary Wave Music has acquired the publishing and writer’s share of P.F. Sloan‘s catalog, as well as the late-singer’s master royalty income. Sloan wrote, performed, and produced for artists across all genres of music — from Barry McGuire to Herman’s Hermits to the Mamas and the Papas. Hits like “Eve of Destruction,” “A Must To Avoid,” “Secret Agent Man,” and “You Baby” were included in the deal.
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Primary Wave Music has acquired a stake in the works of singer-songwriter Eddie Rabbitt. With a dozen #1 country hits, including “I Love A Rainy Night” and “Drivin’ My Life Away” Primary Wave’s vp of business & legal affairs, Lexi Todd, says the Grammy-nominated talent “left a lasting impression in the country music community and beyond.”
Multimedia Music has acquired STX‘s music library. Called Millennium Media, the collection includes titles like The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “London Has Fallen,” “Angel Has Fallen,” “Hitman Wife’s Bodyguard,” “Hellboy,” “The Outpost,” “Mechanic: Resurrection,” “Rambo: Last Blood,” “Blackbird,” and “The Expendables 4,” and more.
Position Music has signed BRIT-nominated producer and songwriter Joe Kearns to a worldwide publishing deal. A consistent collaborator of Ellie Goulding and cuts with Lukas Graham, Henry Moodie, Zara Larsson, IVE, Seeb, and MONSTA X, Kearns says he’s “very excited to get to work and make lots of records” with Position.
MusicBird has acquired the catalog of Greek-Swedish songwriter and producer Alexander “Alex P” Papaconstantinou. Included in the deal are Alex’s writer and publisher’s share of songs like “I Like How It Feels” by Enrique Iglesias, “C’est La Vie” by Khaled, “Live It Up” by Jennifer Lopez, “Boys Will Be Boys” by Paulina Rubio, and “Whip It” by Nicki Minaj.
Joie Manda’s Platinum Grammy Publishing has forged a new partnership with Photo Finish Publishing. Though Photo Finish, which is best known as a record label, has had previous publishing ventures with Warner Chappell and UMPG that were coterminous with their respective label deals, Atlantic and UMG, together with Manda Photo Finish Publishing is launching anew. Under the deal, Photo Finish with sign songwriters and producers and are “thrilled to be working with artists, writers, producers from a different perspective, other than the label.”
Warner Chappell Music, The Core Entertainment and Bailey Zimmerman have signed Dipper to a global publishing deal. A rising country singer-songwriter, Zimmerman calls Dipper a “raw talent” that he is “psyched” to work with.
Concord Music Publishing has signed country artist Clayton Mullen to an exclusive worldwide publishing agreement, including his full catalog and future works.
Concord has acquired the publishing catalog of Mojo Music & Media, a catalog that includes over 30,000 works. Founded in 2018 by Mark Fried, Peter Shane and Alan Wallis, Mojo Music & Media’s holdings include portions of songs recorded by REO Speedwagon, KISS, Cheap Trick, Duran Duran, Earth Wind & Fire and more.
The acquisition comes just after Concord announced that it made a recommended bid to buy Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Limited.
Since its founding, Mojo Music & Media has grown quickly, competing with more established competitors for evergreen catalogs. In 2019, the company partnered with Crestline Investors, Inc. to fund further acquisitions. Soon, it had bought more than 40 catalogs.
Catalogs in the Mojo Music & Media portfolio include: HoriPro Entertainment (REO Speedwagon, Kiss, Jerry Reed), Emerald Forest (Sophie B. Hawkins, Brownstone, Lita Ford), Rick Nielson (Cheap Trick), Warren Cuccurullo (Missing Persons, Duran Duran), Bob Morrison (“Lookin’ For Love”), Sharon Vaughn (“My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”), Larry Gatlin (“All The Gold In California”), D.L. Byron (“Shadows Of The Night”), Jeffrey Cohen (“Freeway Of Love”), Earth Wind & Fire’s Al McKay (“September,” “Best Of My Love”), English Beat and General Public’s Dave Wakeling (“Save It For Later,” “Tenderness”), Jordan Reynolds (writer of Dan + Shay hits “Tequila,” “Speechless,” and “10,000 Hours”), Jacknife Lee (Taylor Swift, Snow Patrol, and Kodaline) and the estates of Johnny Burke (“Misty”), Bernie Wayne (“Blue Velvet”) and Johnny Russell (“Act Naturally”).
My nearly 30-year adventure in music publishing has always been about surrounding myself with the greatest songwriters, getting them paid, keeping them inspired, and elevating the power of their songs in pop culture so they vibrate forever,” says Mark Fried, Mojo’s Co-Founder and CEO. “Concord has been on the same mission since its founding, and my partners and I feel like we’ve come full circle working with [Concord’s Chief Business Development Officer] Steve Salm, whom I’ve known and respected since his first days in the business, and other old friends at Concord to bring our catalogs together. I feel a deep responsibility to the artists, songs, and legacies we represent and I’m excited to see them continue to prosper in the hands of such capable and passionate caretakers.”
“We are delighted to have supported Mojo through their successful ramp up and aggregation of their catalogue. All aspects of our involvement with Mark and team have been outstanding. It is a great example of our desire to use our capital to build valuable asset platforms,” said Michael Guy, chief investment iofficer of Crestline Europe.
Steve Salm, Concord’s chief business development officer, remarked, “Mark Fried is a true original who’s repeatedly seen the value in songs and catalogs well before market trends, always putting songwriters first. Over the last several decades, he’s built two premier independent catalogs with Mojo here and Spirit Music prior, winning the trust of some of the most legendary songwriters and artists. With Mojo, Mark, Pete, and Alan have assembled a stellar collection of incredible hits spanning genres, eras, and territories. The Mojo catalog is a perfect fit with Concord’s catalogs, and we’re honored by the trust they’ve now put in us.”
Concord was represented by Ritholz Levy Fields LLP (Adam Ritholz, Cody Brown, John Brill, Gillian Sloane, Amanda Inglesh, and Jason Barth), and by DLA Piper, Rob Sherman. Shot Tower Capital acted as exclusive financial advisor to Mojo. Mojo was represented by Reed Smith LLP as legal counsel.
Round Hill Music has acquired the remaining share of Big Loud Shirt’s catalog of music publishing rights, bringing Round Hill Music’s ownership of Big Loud Shirt’s music catalog to 100%. Round Hill previously acquired a share of the Big Loud Shirt catalog in 2014.
Round Hill has also acquired 50% of the writer’s income streams from songwriter/producer Craig Wiseman, the founder/owner of Big Loud Shirt.
The Big Loud Shirt catalog comprises more than 1,200 songs recorded by artists including Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Luke Bryan and Tim McGraw. The majority date prior to 2015, with 75% of them at least seven years old.
According to a press release announcing the deal, streaming income generated from Big Loud Shirt’s catalog increased approximately 200% from 2017 to 2021.
The deal brings new rights into Round Hill’s portfolio and expands its existing interests in songs including McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” (co-written by Wiseman), Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” and “Blown Away” and Strait’s “I Saw God Today.”
According to a release, this acquisition also increases Round Hill’s exposure to the country music market, which as of December 31, 2022, comprised 11% of their portfolio.
Round Hill Music CEO Josh Gruss said in a statement, “Craig Wiseman and his publishing company, Big Loud Shirt, have produced some of the highest profile, most recognizable and enduring country music hits of the last three decades, bringing them firmly in line with the song profile of the Company’s portfolio. We have a terrific working relationship with Craig, who we have known for many years, and are deeply familiar with these songs. This investment not only enables us to further increase Round Hill Music’s exposure to the fast-growing Country music genre but also provides an exciting opportunity for us to leverage our in-house platform to manage these incredible songs, maximizing their income streams and further growing their value.”
Wiseman added, “I have known and been working with Round Hill for a decade and I’m thrilled to be expanding our relationship by sharing these incredible pieces of art with them. I know they will manage these songs carefully and effectively, identifying creative opportunities to bring them to new audiences worldwide.”
The Zombies, the British invasion rock band behind classics like “Time of the Season” and “She’s Not There,” announced this week they’ve obtained their master recordings after decades of outside control.
“It’s another stage of us not worrying about what’s going to happen in the future,” says keyboardist Rod Argent, one of the band’s founders and songwriters. “We’ve got more overseeing of everything that’s going on.”
The baroque pop originators signed with Marquis Enterprises in 1964 when they were still teenagers and almost immediately scored a No. 2 hit on the Hot 100 with their Argent-penned debut single, “She’s Not There,” which Marquis had licensed to Decca. They followed that up with another Argent original, “Tell Her No,” which peaked at No. 6. Their signature and most enduring hit — Argent’s “Time of the Season” — didn’t gain traction until after they’d broken up prior to the 1968 release of their sophomore album Odessey and Oracle on CBS. The era-defining song, with its breathy call-and-response vocals from Colin Blunstone and psychedelic keyboard runs by Argent, eventually reached No. 3 on the Hot 100.
Carole Broughton, a Marquis employee at the time, wound up controlling the band’s masters and publishing over several decades, recently placing synchs including Odessey and Oracle album cut “This Will Be Our Year” in the Schitt’s Creek finale and “She’s Not There” in a Chanel ad campaign starring Keira Knightley.
“I’d always promised [the masters] to them,” says Broughton, owner of Marquis and Bocu Group, a publisher that oversees 700 song copyrights. “We’re all in our 70s now and it just felt right. I certainly didn’t want the masters to go back to anybody else other than The Zombies.”
Rod Argent, Hugh Grundy, Chris White and Colin Blunstone of The Zombies attend An Evening With The Zombies at The GRAMMY Museum on April 27, 2017 in Los Angeles.
Rebecca Sapp/WireImage for The Recording Academy
Deal terms were undisclosed, but discussions were “three years in the making,” according to Chris Tuthill, the band’s co-manager. “My partner Cindy [da Silva] and I have been working long and hard to have it controlled and under one roof,” he says. “Although Marquis always kept a sympathetic and active role in the catalog, they didn’t necessarily do things to actively promote the catalog, particularly on DSPs.” When Marquis placed The Zombies’ “A Rose for Emily” in the hit 2017 podcast S-Town, he adds, “It would have been brilliant, had we known this was coming out, having people pitch this for playlisting and promoting the story of this song.”
Still, Broughton and Marquis were unusually fair to The Zombies during a long period when classic-rock stars lost control of their publishing and master recordings to music executives they considered unscrupulous.
“When it was fairly unfashionable, she did the most wonderful job, because she was so dedicated to us,” Argent recalls. “She continually worked it in the early days. She never let it die. That did us a huge favor.” Tuthill adds: “The guys have told me it was always very straightforward, unlike the highway-robbery stories I’ve heard from people who came up in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Everything got paid through that was supposed to be paid through.”
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Broughton sold The Zombies’ publishing, which includes tracks by songwriters Argent, Blunstone and Chris White, to Robert Wise‘s Wise Music Group. “I’d known Bobby since I was young — he used to put out our sheet music,” says Broughton, who began her music-business career in 1961, at 14, with U.K. publisher Mills Music. “It made sense at the time. I knew they were going to be very proactive with it.”
The Zombies, who are on tour this fall and recently released a new album, Different Game, are directing their managers to dig through boxes of files and scouring original four-track tapes for potential catalog reissues. “The gem in all of this is The Zombies don’t have to ask anyone for permission to do anything with respect to their masters,” says Monika Tashman, the band’s attorney. “This is about them claiming something that seemed impossible at the early stage of their career.”
Dennis Murcia was excited to get an email from Disney, but the thrill was short-lived. As an A&R and global development executive for the label Codiscos — founded in 1950, Murcia likens it to “Motown of Latin America” — part of his job revolves around finding new listeners for a catalog of older songs. Disney reached out in 2020 hoping to use Juan Carlos Coronel’s zippy recording of “Colombia Tierra Querida,” written by Lucho Bermudez, in the trailer for an upcoming film titled Encanto. The problem was: The movie company wanted the instrumental version of the track, and Codiscos didn’t have one.
“I had to scramble,” Murcia recalls. A friend recommended that he try AudioShake, a company that uses artificial intelligence-powered technology to dissect songs into their component parts, known as stems. Murcia was hesitant — “removing vocals is not new, but it was never ideal; they always came out with a little air.” He needed to try something, though, and it turned out that AudioShake was able to create an instrumental version of “Colombia Tierra Querida” that met Disney’s standards, allowing the track to appear in the trailer.
“It was a really important synch placement” for us, Murcia says. He calls quality stem-separation technology “one of the best uses of AI I’ve seen,” capable of opening “a whole new profit center” for Codiscos.
Catalog owners and estate administrators are increasingly interested in tapping into this technology, which allows them to cut and slice music in new ways for remixing, sampling or placements in commercials and advertisements. Often “you can’t rely on your original listeners to carry you into the future,” says Jessica Powell, co-founder and CEO of Audioshake. “You have to think creatively about how to reintroduce that music.”
Outside of the more specialized world of estates and catalogs, stem-separation is also being used widely by workaday musicians. Moises is another company that offers the technology; on some days, the platform’s users stem-separate 1 million different songs. “We have musicians all across the globe using it for practice purposes” — isolating guitar parts in songs to learn them better, or removing drums from a track to play along — says Geraldo Ramos, Moises’ co-founder and CEO.
While the ability to create missing stems has been around for at least a decade, the tech has been advancing especially rapidly since 2019 — when Deezer released Spleeter, which offered up “already trained state of the art models for performing various flavors of separation” — and 2020, when Meta released its own model called Demucs. Those “really opened the field and inspired a lot of people to build experiences based on stem separation, or even to work on it themselves,” Powell says. (She notes that AudioShake’s research was under way well before those releases.)
As a result, stem separation has “become super accessible,” according to Matt Henninger, Moises’ vp of sales and business development. “It might have been buried in Pro Tools five years ago, but now everyone can get their hands on it.”
Where does artificial intelligence come in? Generative AI refers to programs that ingest reams of data and find patterns they can use to generate new datasets of a similar type. (Popular examples include DALL-E, which does this with images, and ChatGPT, which does it with text.) Stem separation tech finds the patterns corresponding to the different instruments in songs so that they can be isolated and removed from the whole.
“We basically train a model to recognize the frequencies and everything that’s related to a drum, to a bass, to vocals, both individually and how they relate to each other in a mix,” Ramos explains. Done at scale, with many thousands of tracks licensed from independent artists, the model eventually gets good enough to pull apart the constituent parts of a song it’s never seen before.
A lot of recordings are missing those building blocks. They could be older tracks that were cut in mono, meaning that individual parts were never tracked separately when the song was recorded. Or the original multi-track recordings could have been lost or damaged in storage.
Even in the modern world, it’s possible for stems to disappear in hard-drive crashes or other technical mishaps. The opportunity to create high-quality stems for recordings “where multi-track recordings aren’t available effectively unlocks content that is frozen in time,” says Steven Ames Brown, who administers Nina Simone‘s estate, among others.
Arron Saxe of Kinfolk Management, which includes the Otis Redding Estate, believes stem-separation can enhance the appeal of the soul great’s catalog for sample-based producers. “We have 280 songs, give or take, that Otis Redding wrote that sit in a pot,” he says. “How do you increase the value of each one of those? If doing that is pulling out a 1-second snare drum from one of those songs to sample, that’s great.” And it’s an appealing alternative to well-worn legacy marketing techniques, which Saxe jokes are “just box sets and new track listings of old songs.”
Harnessing the tech is only “half the battle,” though. “The second part is a harder job,” Saxe says. “Do you know how to get the music to a big-name producer?” Murcia has been actively pitching electronic artists, hoping to pique their interest in sampling stems from Codiscos.
It can be similarly challenging to get the attention of a brand or music supervisor working in film and TV. But again, stem separation “allows editors to interact with or customize the music a lot more for a trailer in a way that is not usually possible with this kind of catalog material,” says Garret Morris, owner of Blackwatch Dominion, a full-service music publishing, licensing and rights management company that oversees a catalog extending from blues to boogie to Miami bass.
Simpler than finding ways to open catalogs up to samplers is retooling old audio for the latest listening formats. Simone’s estate used stem-separation technology to create a spatial audio mix of her album Little Girl Blue as this style of listening continues to grow in popularity. (The number of Amazon Music tracks mixed in immersive-audio has jumped over 400% since 2019, for example.)
Powell expects that the need for this adaptation will continue to grow. “If you buy into the vision presented by Apple, Facebook, and others, we will be interacting in increasingly immersive environments in the future,” she adds. “And audio that is surrounding us, just like it does in the real world, is a core component to have a realistic immersive experience.”
Brown says the spatial audio re-do of Simone’s album resulted in “an incremental increase in quality, and that can be enough to entice a brand new group of listeners.” “Most recording artists are not wealthy,” he continues. “Things that you can do to their catalogs so that the music can be fresh again, used in commercials and used in soundtracks of movies or TV shows, gives them something that makes a difference in their lives.”
Distribution company and payment platform Stem said on Tuesday it raised $250 million from Victory Park Capital to expand it’s popular advance check product. Stem first started offering the product in 2020 to artists at various career stages, including artists like Justine Skye, who used the capital as bridge financing when transitioning from a major […]