Catalog
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Reservoir Media said Wednesday it acquired the publishing and recorded rights to the catalog of jazz living legend Sonny Rollins — aka “The Saxophone Colossus.”
A recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Grammys, Rollins is perhaps best known for his 1956 album Saxophone Colossus and its track, “St. Thomas,” which has been deemed “culturally, historically…significant” by the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
A regular collaborator of other jazz giants Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, Rollins continued to release music, including his 2001 Grammy-winning album This is What I Do and 2006 Grammy-winning solo “Why Was I Born?”
“I’m happy that Reservoir will be helping to maintain my musical legacy, which was created in concert with so many great musicians I’m proud to be associated with,” Rollins said in a statement announcing the acquisition.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, with Reservoir adding that it includes a “mix of rights across Sonny’s entire catalog.”
Rollins catalog is a body of work spanning more than 70 years of “musical innovation,” Rell Lafargue, Reservoir president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
“I first learned of Sonny through his music, playing ‘St. Thomas’ as a young jazz student, and it’s incredibly meaningful that Reservoir and I can now commit to preserving Sonny’s musical legacy and amplifying his contributions to the artform for audiences old and new,” Lafargue said.
Seeker Music has signed Australian-born songwriter, producer, DJ, and artist Kito to a publishing agreement. Known for her collaborations with artists like FLETCHER, Empress Of, Jorja Smith and more, Kito’s deal is one of the company’s first frontline signings.
Kito first became known as a DJ at the start of the 2010s, remixing songs like Beyonce’s “Run the World,” Saweetie and Doja Cat’s “Best Friend,” and MARINA’s “Venus Fly Trap.” Later on, as she developed her writing and production skills, Kito earned cuts with Mabel, BANKS, Tinashé and Jorja Smith and released her own EP Blossom, featuring Jeremih, ZHU and Terror Jr.
Seeker Music was founded in 2020 and quietly amassed a catalog of music IP over the next two years, including hits recorded by Run the Jewels, Christopher Cross, Ginuwine and more. The company is administered by Downtown and funded by London-based private equity firm M&G.
Seeker Music founder and CEO, Evan Bogart, told Billboard in a previous interview that his aim was always to become a multi-hyphenate music company, developing current songwriters and artists as well as building up a robust back catalog of songs, however, the company’s frontline efforts were hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic. “I invest with my heart before money,” the executive explained, adding that meeting talent over Zoom made it difficult to foster camaraderie with potential signees. Now that in-person meetings and writing sessions have resumed, Seeker has bolstered its frontline business, signing acts like Kito as well as Sofía Valdés (Warner Records), Katie Pearlman (Kelly Clarkson, Grace Potter, Sabrina Carpenter), Sweetsound (Jesse Baez, Snoop Dogg, Natanael Cano), and MNDR.
Kito noted that she opted to sign with Seeker for its “quality over quantity” approach to its roster and that Bogart is a songwriter himself. Best known for penning hits like “SOS” by Rihanna and “Halo” by Beyonce, Kito says of Bogart “I trust Evan because he understands what it’s like to write a song and bring it into the world. He’s also built himself as a songwriter ‘business,’ and worked with, and mentored, some of the greatest writers in the world. The whole team at Seeker really ‘gets’ the creative process and what’s important to music creators. I’m excited for this next chapter together and everything we’re cooking up for 2023 and beyond.”
Bogart says of the deal, “everyone wanted to sign Kito and I couldn’t be prouder that she chose Seeker to be her family. She’s insanely talented and she’s going to dominate music, and the music business, in the years to come.”
Hipgnosis Song Management announced a deal on Tuesday that gives Beatclub producers access to some of Hipgnosis’ iconic hit songs and boosts its own access to more synch opportunities, the companies said in a joint statement.
Launched in 2021 by four-time Grammy winner Timbaland and his longtime manager, the head of Mono Music Group Gary Marella, Beatclub is an online marketplace built to help creators and producers monetize their beats and music.
Beatclub users can already use beats by Timbaland and others, like Justin Timberlake, Tainy, J. Cole and Mike Dean, in their own mixes. Hipgnosis, which also invested in Beatclub’s recent series A-2 funding round, will now also offer a hand-picked collection of songs from its catalog approved for sampling by Beatclub’s elite tier of producers. Any other rights that artists need to have cleared for usage are handled by Beatclub’s licensing team.
The deal could also help place more of Hipgnosis’ songs in films, TV, ads and games because Beatclub’s portal helps connect artists on its platform to synch opportunities with major brand, label, gaming and production companies. Similar strategies have been deployed by other catalog companies, like Primary Wave.
Timbaland has worked with Hipgnosis and its founder Merck Mercuriadis before, having sold his catalog to the music investment in 2019.
“At a time when interpolation and sampling has never been a more important part of creation and success, I want the greatest creators in the world to have access to our incomparable songs to make them the hits not only of the past but the future,” Mercuriadis, founder and head of Hipgnosis Song Management, said in a statement.
Calling Mercuriadis a “disruptor,” Timbaland said Mercuriadis’ “vision of the future of the music creator economy aligns closely with Beatclub’s.”
Marella, Beatclub’s co-founder, said Hipgnosis’ mission to promote songwriters and producers’ rights aligns with Beatclub’s values. “Beatclub … was built for creators by creators,” Marella said in a statement. “Our mission has always been to empower artists, song writers and producers however we can.”
MusicBird AG, a Swiss-based music rights investment firm, has signed a term loan facility with a capacity up to $100 million with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). With publishing rights from hitmaker J.R. Rotem (Rihanna, Jason Derulo, Fall Out Boy) and master income and publishing rights from Shaggy already part of their acquired catalog, the firm is hoping to invest even further in music.
Founded in 2020, MusicBird began acquiring music rights in 2021. The company is focused on becoming a “boutique house of hits,” as described in their announcement, with a highly selective portfolio of “evergreen” songs. The firm notes it is open to all types of genres and regions when considering new catalogs and hopes to harness technology to help grow music revenue.
In addition to this new push into growing their catalog, MusicBird also recently appointed a new CEO, Paul Brown — who previously served as vp global content and platforms for HTC and svp strategic partnerships at Spotify — as well as a new CFO, Roger Howl — who previously worked as senior vp of finance at Hipgnosis Songs Fund.
This announcement comes shortly after a number of key catalog deals have been announced, including Opus Music Group’s 9-figure acquisition of Juice WRLD’s catalog and Hipgnosis’ acquisitions of parts of Tobias Jesso Jr. and Justin Bieber’s catalogs. Meanwhile, Variety is reporting a possible upcoming sale for Michael Jackson’s estate. Though last year some were predicting a slowdown in the catalog market, it appears there are still many players continuing to invest in music IP, despite an economic downturn, rising interest rates and other extenuating circumstances affecting the global economy.
Tony Beaudoin, managing director of entertainment finance at MUFG says: “MUFG is thrilled to lead the senior debt facility for MusicBird, which will allow the company to expand its catalog acquisition initiative of valued music rights. Paul and Roger bring trusted experience in the music space to the company and MUFG is confident in their ability to grow MusicBird’s IP library.”
Hipgnosis Songs Management has purchased 100% interest in publishing copyrights to 217 songs in the catalog of TMS, the British songwriting and production trio.
This latest acquisition includes the trio’s publishing copyrights, producer royalty streams, and neighboring rights, including “Someone You Loved” and “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi and “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself” by Jess Glynne.
Comprised of Tom “Froe” Barnes, Benjamin Kohn, and Peter “Merf” Kelleher, TMS has already sold the copyrights of 121 of their other songs to Hipgnosis in the past, including songs recorded by G-Eazy, Sigma and Emeli Sandé. The writers’ share of ownership and royalties of the previous 121 songs is also included in the latest acquisition.
“Someone You Loved” has achieved 7-times platinum status in the U.K. since its release in 2018 and is touted as the U.K.’s most played song of all time on Spotify. Worldwide, it ranks as the fourth most streamed with 2.6 billion and counting. “Someone You Loved” was written by Lewis Capaldi, Samuel Roman, and the TMS trio, meaning Hipgnosis now controls three out of five writers’ shares of publishing. TMS also produced the track.
Hipgnosis Songs Management, the entity managing the publicly traded company’s catalog, acquired these songs on behalf of Hipgnosis Songs Capital, an investment vehicle established by Hipgnosis and Blackstone. The world’s largest alternative asset manager, Blackstone pledged $1 billion to further investment in music IP with Hipgnosis and also took a majority stake.
TMS has also worked with Dua Lipa, John Legend, Maroon 5, Ed Sheeran, Lily Allen and Bebe Rexha, One Direction, Cher, Ed Sheeran, Leona Lewis, Rita Ora, Jessie J, Lily Allen, Labrinth, JLS, Years & Years, Oily Murs, Ella Henderson, Birdy, Jem & The Holograms, Sinead Harnett, Kwabs and Dot Rotten.
It is not clear which, if any, of these artists’ songs are included in this deal. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
TMS were represented by Paul Centellas at North Pole Management and Sonia Diwan at Sound Advice.
“Froe, Ben, Merf and their manager Paul Centellas have been an important part of the Hipgnosis family for many years now so it’s fantastic that we’ve been able to continue our relationship with this new acquisition including what will undoubtedly be a contender for song of the decade with Lewis Capaldi’s iconic ‘Someone You Loved,’” says Merck Mercuriadis, CEO and founder of Hipgnosis Song Management.
Barnes, Kohn and Kelleher (TMS) jointly add, We’re incredibly proud of this body of work and know Merck and the family at Hipgnosis will be excellent custodians of these copyrights in future. It’s incredible to see what they’ve built in just a few short years and we know they’ll continue to represent these songs with passion and commitment.”
“Nobody is doing more to elevate the standing and value of the songwriter than Merck and the team at Hipgnosis,” says Centellas, managing director, North Pole Management. “We’re very happy to entrust them with these incredible copyrights and look forward to working with them across various initiatives to ensure the songwriter is properly valued and remunerated in future. Without songwriters, there is no music business.”
Reservoir Media has purchased the catalog of Bronx-born talent Dion Francis DiMucci, better known as Dion. The deal includes his publishing catalog and future works as well as synchronization rights to his master recordings.
Best known for releasing defining, R&B-infused rock in the 1950s and ’60s, Dion’s catalog includes “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer,” “Ruby Baby” and “Dream Lover,” which he released with his band Dion and the Belmonts. Over the course of his career, he has accrued 11 top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.
Despite his many decades of success, Dion continues to tour and release music today. In 2021, he released the album Stomping Ground featuring Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Knopfler and more.
Dion’s songs have continued to permeate pop culture, particularly via their placement in films and TV shows, including Diner, Peggy Sue Got Married, Little Big League, The Sopranos, Behind Enemy Lines, The West Wing, The Wire and Ozark. Additionally, his life and songbook inspired the creation of The Wanderer, a musical that had a successful pre-Broadway run at Paper Mill Playhouse in April 2022.
“I am most pleased to enter into this great new relationship with Reservoir,” Dion said in a statement. “I know how much the Reservoir team appreciates my work, and I am looking forward to some exciting times ahead with them. I want to thank the entire Reservoir team for helping to make it happen, particularly Rell Lafargue, Jonathan Sturges and Faith Newman. I also want to thank Marvin Katz, my attorney, who introduced me to Reservoir and represented me in the transaction.”
Reservoir’s executive vp of A&R and catalog development, Faith Newman, added, “Dion is a pillar of early rock and roll music and wrote and recorded songs that are universally loved and recognized. He continues to make music with and inspire the genre’s biggest names today. It’s an honor to support both his evergreen catalog and future hits.”
As 2022 comes to a close, the music business can look back on another hectic year: turnover at the top levels of several big companies; record-breaking successes in several sectors of the industry; and some major headlines coming from sometimes unexpected places, all of which captured the attention of the music business over the past nearly 12 months. Here are 10 big stories and trends that helped define the year in the industry.
The Executive Turntable
The end of the year is always time for turnover, and the final stretch of 2022 has seen more of that than usual. The biggest story of all, however, is a change atop the Warner Music Group, with Stephen Cooper exiting after a successful 11-year run that saw the major double its revenue and boost its market share while taking the company public once again. He’ll be replaced by YouTube’s Robert Kyncl in February, in a move that has been widely seen as a nod toward the tech-based present and future of the music biz, particularly at WMG. Though changes atop the major groups are relatively rare, that was far from the only transition this year: Def Jam, Island and Capitol all welcomed new chairmen/CEOs, with Tunji Balogun, the duo of Justin Eshak and Imran Majid and Michelle Jubelirer taking over the trio of UMG companies, respectively. John Esposito also is transitioning into a new chairman emeritus role at Warner Music Nashville, handing the day-to-day reins to his longtime heirs apparent Ben Kline and Cris Lacy, who will take over in January. Warner also integrated 300 Entertainment into the 300 Elektra Entertainment Group, with Kevin Liles in charge, then placed it under the umbrella of the newly-formed Atlantic Music Group, with Julie Greenwald at the helm. And just recently, Motown chairman/CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam surprised many in the industry by announcing her intention to step down, at a time when the label is in its best shape in years, with a successor yet to be named. The C-Suites have been spinning much more than usual this year.
The Ticketmaster-Taylor Swift Meltdown
Cross Taylor Swift, and her fans, at your peril. The biggest artist in the world, whose latest album Midnights easily cleared the biggest streaming week globally of 2022, had set a presale for her first tour in five years, with tickets slated to become available on Nov. 15 through Ticketmaster. But the company badly, and somewhat inexplicably, misjudged the level of demand that existed for Swift’s tour. Long wait times, astronomical prices and service outages tanked the pre-sale, with billions of bots, according to the company, flooding the site and resulting in 3.5 billion requests to access it — four times the previous high water mark. That resulted in millions of frustrated, ticket-less fans. Which would have been bad enough, if it didn’t spark a firestorm that has yet to abate and is showing no signs of doing so. (As Billboard’s Glenn Peoples wrote, “Ticketmaster is one of the few non-partisan issues in America in 2022.”) There is now a Justice Department investigation into whether Live Nation has abused its market share in the live business (which was said to pre-date the Taylor tour, though it came to light in the wake of the problem) and a Senate antitrust panel hearing on the docket, as well as several state-level probes, and a lawsuit from more than two dozen fans accusing the company of fraud and “anticompetitive conduct.” It’s unclear if changes are on the horizon, but it has proven a headache of massive proportions.
Top-Level Touring Success
The headlines have never been rosier: Live Nation and Ticketmaster reported record-breaking quarters. Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour became the first ever to average a $10 million gross per show. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour closed in on the record for highest-grossing tour of all time. In short, it was a great year to be in the live music business — if you’re one of the biggest artists or promoters in the world. For a lot of others, the outlook was much less rosy: a “nightmare” of supply chain issues, COVID-related cancellations and postponements, rising costs and routing difficulties all combined to make it much more difficult for a lot of artists to get back out on the road this year. It is, and will continue to be, a process to get back to normal.
Synchs On Fire
A well-placed synch has always been a big revenue driver, particularly for legacy acts, but this past year the combination of prestige television and the TikTok algorithm combined to super-charge some of the biggest synchs to not just big bucks, but new chart highs, too. This past year, the biggest story on this front was Kate Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill,” which received a high-profile synch in Stranger Things and simply took off, surging into the top five of the Hot 100, becoming the oldest song to reach No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart and returning to the top 10 of the Alternative Airplay chart after a record 28-year absence, while doubling its label revenue in the first two weeks after the series aired. And that wasn’t even the only Stranger Things-related synch to blow up: Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” ballooned 400% in streams in the days after its synch in the season finale. Songs featured in Euphoria, The Batman and Thor exploded in value, while the RIAA’s midyear report saw synch revenue growing faster than ever. Most recently, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” with a placement in Netflix’s Wednesday, saw its revenue grow more than 8,000% in a single week.
Ebbs and Flows of Catalog Market
The red-hot catalog market has been the talk of the business for almost half a decade at this point, but over the past year things started to change in some unexpected ways due to rising interest rates, the dwindling number of truly elite catalogs available and the faltering of some of the sector’s most prominent players. And still there were big wins, including Sting’s deal with UMPG that Billboard estimated could be worth well north of $300 million, Stephen Stills’ sale of a controlling interest in over 1,000 songs to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group and UMG’s purchase of Frank Zappa’s catalog in the region of $30 million. Meanwhile, Brookfield dropped $2 billion into Primary Wave, which promptly acquired the catalogs of Joey Ramone ($10 million) and Huey Lewis & the News ($20 million). Concord swung a package deal for the Genesis catalog as well as those of its individual members for somewhere around $350 million, and new players like Litmus Music came into the market with $500 million to spread around (some of which just went towards Keith Urban’s master recordings). So despite a “challenging environment” and an end to the catalog “feeding frenzy,” there’s still a lot of juice left in those old songs (and a big Pink Floyd-sized catalog potentially in the offing).
The Rush Toward Services
While one sector of the business is running with arms wide open toward catalog ownership, another sector is running just as firmly in the opposite direction: toward services, or partnering with artists and labels to provide a backbone of support to help them achieve their goals without giving up ownership through distribution, marketing, publicity, promotions, royalty claiming and other services. The independent distribution space has generally been a viable business model for decades, but the rush into services ramped up in the past year. Companies like SoundCloud, TikTok, Tencent and Downtown embraced the shift with realigned business models, joining relatively new entrants to the space like UnitedMasters, Stem and Utopia. Many of the major labels (Interscope, Republic, 300) also launched their own distro subsidiaries in an attempt to grow their market share in an increasingly indie world. For some, however, the shift was less of a slam dunk than they may have envisioned, with a tough business model that relies on scale colliding with the increasingly-murky corners of the digital music industry –resulting in fraud, financial challenges and lukewarm responses from the market.
The Onset of Crypto Winter
Early in the year, Web3 projects exploded in what seemed like every sector of the music business, including all three major labels along with companies like Spotify, Coachella, Ticketmaster, Gibson, the Grammys and Death Row Records — not to mention artists like Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, Pharrell and Keith Richards. Universal launched an NFT band, Warner partnered with a slew of web3 companies, Snoop promised to buy Death Row and make it into an NFT record label; the possibilities seemed endless. But the seas proved to be much choppier than many had expected, and a series of selloffs and financial failures (as well as recession and inflation fears) brought in what many called the Crypto Winter, with sales and enthusiasm beginning to ebb as the year went on. By the time the second-biggest crypto exchange, FTX, spectacularly failed in November, there had been a 70%-80% cool-off in the market, to the point where the once-ubiquitous format seemed ready for another hibernation while the industry tries to figure out how best to take advantage of the new-ish technology. Expect the ebbs and flows to continue until we’re all in an acronym haze.
BTS Break Rattles Biz — And HYBE Stock
By just about any metric, BTS has been one of the biggest and most formidable acts of any genre in the past several years, racking up No. 1 hits, big-name collaborations, massive box office grosses and accounting for nearly one-third of the entire K-pop market in the U.S. since 2021, according to Luminate. So the group’s decision to take some time off for solo projects was a blow to the group’s management company, label and agency HYBE, which saw its stock, already down 45% for the year at that point, sink 27% in the week after the announcement. (Shares recovered a bit after closing at 145,000 won following the announcement, hitting a low of 107,000 on Oct. 13 and rebounding to 157,000 as of Dec. 12.) With the group members facing the prospect of mandatory service in the South Korean military, HYBE is facing an uncertain outlook for 2023, despite third-quarter growth and the possibility of positive returns from BTS members’ solo projects. For K-pop fans, however, there is room for other companies to step in: JYP Entertainment has had chart success with TWICE and Stray Kids multiple times this year, SM Entertainment’s BLACKPINK scored a No. 1 album in October and Big Hit Entertainment has generated success with Tomorrow X Together. While there’s plenty of opportunity in the K-pop market, the road ahead is uncertain for HYBE, a company that not too long again was a slam dunk.
Despite Complications, the Business is Thriving
It’s been a complicated year for the business overall, as the return from COVID has been trickier than expected, breaking new artists has become harder than ever and overarching financial issues like inflation and the possibility of a recession have cooled what had been a white-hot market. But despite those challenges, the music business has been growing on almost all fronts for another year. The touring business has already been covered here, but the U.S. recorded music business also saw on-demand audio streams surpass 1 trillion for the first time ever — representing a 611% increase from 2015, according to Luminate. Despite supply chain issues that continue to bedevil labels and manufacturers, vinyl sales passed $1 billion in revenue for the first time since the mid-1980s. At the midyear mark, they were up more than 22% — well before Taylor Swift’s Midnights set the record for largest vinyl sales week since Luminate began tracking data in 1991. Overall consumption is up another 9.2% year over year so far in 2022, with no signs of slowing down and with record companies increasing their guidance for investors in 2023. Amid cutbacks and hiring freezes in tech and media, the music business stil appears to be on strong footing.
It’s Still a TikTok World
Love it, hate it, rue its influence or spend hours scrolling it, the industry was as obsessed with TikTok in 2022 as it’s ever been, and the ByteDance-owned social streaming behemoth has leaned further than ever into its connections to the music biz — for better or worse, depending on whom you ask. The service has been behind the massive success of hits both old (Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” Frank Ocean’s “Lost”) and new (Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” Bebe Rexha and David Guetta’s “I’m Good”) while helping break new artists like Em Beihold and Cafuné. But the labels’ love affair with TikTok has, over the past year, cooled down, as breaking a hit has become more complicated and the marketing pluses that it offered have fizzled. A distribution play from the platform called SoundOn was met with a lukewarm response, while a ByteDance streaming service, Resso, has rolled out in select markets, with rumors that it could come to the U.S. soon — if TikTok can ease the concerns of U.S. officials. And that comes as the frustration over low payouts and song leaks have some executives warning of a repeat of the early days of MTV and YouTube, when music content was regularly used to promote a fledgling service without commensurate compensation. Still, the biggest song on the platform in 2022 — a nine-year-old track from Swedish sad boy Yung Lean — grew its stream count by over 1,000%, and TikTok is still the single biggest proving ground for singles in the current digital climate. What to make of TikTok in 2022? How about…everything?
Iggy Azalea has sold her master recording and publishing catalog to Domain Capital for an eight-figure sum, a source close to the deal told Billboard. The wide reaching deal includes 100% of Azalea’s share of her existing catalog, including No. 1 hit “Fancy” (featuring Charli XCX), “Black Widow” (featuring Rita Ora), and “Problem” (with Ariana Grande), and it includes “an additional trigger” for Azalea to earn future revenue on master recordings.
The rapper’s discography includes The New Classic, Surviving the Summer (EP), and In My Defense and The End of an Era. Though she has previously released music under deals with Virgin EMI and Island Records, Azalea has since founded her own label. Called Bad Dreams, it was formerly distributed by Empire but is now in the midst of closing a new distribution deal with a different firm, the source says.
The independent rapper owns 100% of her Bad Dreams label, and she will be able to fully own her masters and publishing on all forthcoming music, starting Q1 2023. On the publishing side, she has an administration deal with Sony Music Publishing.
These days, the Australia native is living in Miami and working on her next album and raising her son, Onyx, whom she welcomed in 2020. She plans to release a full project sometime next year.
Azalea’s deal was revealed just weeks after Domain Capital announced that it closed more than $700 million in commitments for a commingle entertainment fund. In their press release about the fund on Nov. 1, Domain Capital added that it had already deployed more than $170 million in film, television and music investments to date.
“We are excited to launch our first diversified private entertainment royalty fund,” said Anthony Tittanegro, executive managing director of Domain Capital Group in the release. “At a time of sustained entertainment industry growth supported by an ever-evolving landscape of distribution channels, we are focused on building a diversified asset-base to generate cash yield and help maintain our investors’ capital.” The firm declined Billboard’s request for comment.
Former Warner Music Group executive and the Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen said on Tuesday (Nov. 1) he is taking a new job as chief executive officer of a fintech platform aimed at selling fractional shares in song catalogs.
Cohen, who stepped down from his role as chief innovation officer at WMG in September, said the aim of the new venture is to “fractionalize ownership of music royalties.”
Fractional shares are a familiar concept in finance, and brokerages like Robinhood and Fidelity Investments sell them as a way to buy a slice of a share for less than the price of the whole stock. The market for buying and investing in music publishing rights has traditionally been open to only the world’s largest music companies and, more recently, money managers.
Introducing fractional shares could change that by making it possible for more smaller investors to participate alongside the deep-pocketed private equity funds and major labels.
In an email to Billboard, Cohen said has already secured rights from major artists and catalogs, and his team is now working to build the platform’s technology.
“We have a very aggressive timeline,” said Cohen, declining to provide a specific date when the venture would launch to outside investors.
Prior to joining WMG in 2019, Cohen founded the Orchard with Richard Gottehrer in 1997 and built it into the largest independent distributor on iTunes when the download platform launched in 2003. Cohen and Gottehrer sold the Orchard to Dimensional Associates, the private equity arm of JDS Capital Management, the same year, and subsequently expanded into video, music licensing, marketing & analytics, royalty collections, sports media, neighboring rights and more.
In 2015, Sony Music Entertainment bought out Dimensional Associates for $200 million, and in 2017 merged it with RED into a single global distribution entity operating under the Orchard brand.
While Cohen’s new venture has not yet settled on a name, he described its aspirations and potential as “transformational” for the music industry.
“I am only interested in doing things at scale,” Cohen wrote.