State Champ Radio Concord
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Sony Music Publishing ruled the Top Radio Airplay, Hot 100 Songs and Country Airplay publisher rankings for its third consecutive quarter of 2023, and Warner Chappell Music surged to No. 2 on the Hot 100 Songs chart — the first time it has held the position since the Hot 100 ranking began in 2019.
For the period spanning July through September, all of the big three publishers benefited from shares in the Afrobeats radio hit “Calm Down” by Rema and Selena Gomez. Sony also benefited from stakes in “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen, which hit No. 5 on the Top Radio Airplay chart, and Taylor Swift’s surprise hit “Cruel Summer,” which reached No. 3 on the quarter’s Hot 100 Songs ranking, four years after its initial release due to its placement as the opening song of Swift’s The Eras Tour.
Last quarter, Tracy Chapman’s Purple Rabbit Music publishing company broke into the Hot 100 and Top Radio Airplay charts (ranking No. 7 and No. 10, respectively) for the first time, thanks to Luke Combs’ cover of her 1988 song “Fast Car.” This quarter, her market share as a publisher/songwriter grew even higher. Chapman finished the quarter as the top songwriter on all three charts, propelling Purple Rabbit Music to No. 5 on Top Radio Airplay and No. 6 on both Hot 100 Songs and Country Airplay.
But she wasn’t the only self-published songwriter to make the charts this quarter. As the sole writer of “Rich Men North of Richmond,” Oliver Anthony Music’s publishing company, Christopher Anthony Lunsford Pub Designee, placed at No. 8 on Hot 100 Songs with a 1.49% market share, surpassing such top 10 perennials as Downtown and Reservoir. Like Chapman, Anthony is the sole songwriter of his breakthrough song.
This is the first time that two independent songwriters have broken into the Hot 100 Songs chart at the same time.
Warner Chappell rose to No. 2 on the Hot 100 ranking for the first time in 19 quarters. Previously, it often ranked third or fourth. “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen, “Calm Down” by Rema and Selena Gomez, and 49 other Hot 100 Songs hits accounted for its strong showing of 18.18% of the market share. The publisher held steady in third place on the Top Radio Airplay chart with 15.87% of the market share, and ranked second on the Country Airplay chart with a 26.2% share.
Universal Music Publishing Group took second place on Top Radio Airplay — where its song placements increased to 52 from 49 in the second quarter — and third on Hot 100 Songs. Combs’ “Love You Anyway,” No. 3 on Country Airplay; “Cruel Summer”; and “Calm Down” were UMPG’s highest-ranked songs.
Kobalt held fast to No. 4 on both Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 Songs but slid to No. 5 on Country Airplay behind BMG. The latter publisher’s share in Jelly Roll’s “Need a Favor” helped it edge past Kobalt’s 4.59% market share with 4.93%.
BMG and Big Machine Music both climbed in the ranks on the Country Airplay charts this quarter. BMG rose from fifth to fourth ranking, thanks to its share of 12 songs on the chart this quarter, including Jelly Roll’s “Need a Favor.” BMM climbed from eighth last quarter (2.57%) to seventh this quarter (2.97%), thanks in part to Luke Bryan’s “But I Got a Beer In My Hand.”
Concord finished 10th on Top Radio Airplay with 1.37%. That percentage might rise in the fourth quarter due to its acquisitions of Round Hill Music and Mojo Music & Media in September. If Concord’s third-quarter market share was combined with those of Round Hill and Pulse, which Concord also owns but lists separately, it would have finished at No. 5 on Top Radio Airplay with 4.96% and at No. 7 on Hot 100 Songs with 3.1%.
Rounding out the top 10, Reservoir fell to No. 8 on Top Radio Airplay with 1.82%, though it improved on its No. 7-ranked second-quarter share of 1.62%. It rounded out the Hot 100 Songs top 10 with 1.17%. Hipgnosis (1.76%) and Downtown (1.44%) finished at No. 9 on Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 Songs, respectively.
Additional reporting by Ed Christman.
Concord announced the completion of its $468 million acquisition of the Round Hill Music Royalty Fund on Thursday (Nov. 2), officially completing the year’s biggest catalog deal. The deal includes over 150,000 songs, among them works by The Beatles and tunes recorded by Elvis Presley, Meatloaf, James Brown and Billie Holiday, but also marked a pivotal moment for publicly traded royalty funds and Concord’s scale of business.
Concord CEO Scott Valentine, who succeeded Scott Pascucci in February, spoke to Billboard about the deal, what it says about the state of the music royalties market and how Concord plans to deal with the headwinds that currently face the music industry.
On Oct. 31, you closed the acquisition of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund. Why was it attractive to Concord and what does it say about the state of the song catalog market?
When you look at the landscape of acquisitions of scale and quality, [Round Hill’s] assets had been on our radar for a while. Our view was that the stock price of the company wasn’t giving the appropriate fair value to what the assets were worth. Josh was one of the early proponents of the notion of music assets as financial assets. We have similar backgrounds, having started in investment banking. The quality of assets that Round Hill had accumulated was remarkable, in terms of the breadth, the genres and the ability for these assets to be used in film and television. There are Beatles songs in here for God’s sake. I’m referring to these things as assets. They’re works of art, really, that have stood the test of time from a revenue perspective.
You’ve indicated that this deal counters the broader narrative that the music royalty market has deflated over the last year or so. Why?
Our deal proves that from an institutional perspective the underlying value of copyrights is still there. We’ve just gone through the first-ever cycle of price increases at the DSPs. It seems, knock on wood, that the impact on churn has been within the tolerance levels [of customers]. You have continued growth in countries around the world that have never in the history of the music business been significant sources of legitimate revenue. We are now expecting fairly regular price increases [by the DSPs] in mature markets. So, if you believe in the long-term trends that suggest the value of music should increase over the mid-term. Then, as institutional investors, it comes down to what is your time horizon?
But with Concord acquiring one publicly listed music royalty fund, and Hipgnosis investors voting to possibly wind up the Hipgnosis Songs Fund, doesn’t this spell the end of the publicly traded music royalty fund experiment?
The story isn’t written yet on Hipgnosis. Their shareholders and board still have time to [explore options]. The thing that strikes me about the commentary around Hipgnosis has been the fundamental belief by shareholders in the underlying value of the assets it owns. Shareholders rejected the sale of those assets because they seemed to fundamentally believe the value of those assets was greater than [what they could get in that) proposed in the sale.
The question is whether a publicly traded fund is or isn’t the right vehicle to access returns. We’ve tapped the asset-backed securities space and have done very well. There is certainly private investment happening and it continues to happen. I still see significant institutional interest in this space. We are still getting inbound requests from artists, managers, etcetera, asking us to look at assets for sale. The underlying market for assets is robust. Because interest rates have gone up, the high end of the price scale has come down. But there is still plenty of activity where the prices make sense.
How do you view Concord’s creative mission and direction?
We built the company over time around our catalog. We have an extraordinary catalog of works that span over a century. Because we’ve been financed by pension funds and institutional investors, the cash flow of the catalog and investing in catalogs has been part of how we grow the company. But I’m keenly focused on the notion that we are not a fund. We are a fully functional organic music company. You can’t be a music company without creating new art and discovering new artists and exposing those new artists to the world. They will create the next remarkable piece of art that 50 years from now people talk about buying. Concord has the scale now and the relationships to be a leader in catalog acquisition and exploitation but also front-line investment. And on the music publishing side, we have really grown that business over the last three to four years. We have the writers of some of the largest songs in the world. One of ours co-wrote most of the last two Harry Styles records. On the recorded side, we’ve always been in more niche genres — jazz, bluegrass, adult contemporary. We have not been in the front-line pop business or R&B or hip-hop. Those genres have always been the domain of the majors. It’s because it takes a significant amount of marketing expenditure and recording…. That said, we’re now the size that we can compete occasionally to get a few artists in those genres. I think it’s important to grow that business.
We have seen layoffs hit different music companies over the last 18 months. Do you feel your team is in good shape? Are you looking to make any pivots in strategy or structure?
From a senior exec position, [former chief label officer] Tom Whalley stepped back, so we had to find a replacement. That’s why we got Tom Becci. Because he is taking on this new role, there is a little bit of tweaking that will go on — the integration of frontline and catalog. How people report up through the recorded music division and how people spend their time may take some tweaking. But it’s a structural shift —reporting changes. I feel like we’ve always thought about the business and growth in a careful way so that we hopefully did not over hire or put people in situations where, if there was a retrenchment in the business, we had challenges. I don’t see the need for wholesale changes or layoffs in the near term.
What is the thinking behind putting frontline and catalog under the same roof?
From our perspective, the issue with catalog versus frontline is you’re really talking about a relationship with an artist. If we have an artist on one of our frontline labels who also has catalog, having two different divisions working that artists’ life work creates some weird, unintended division when the artist is hoping to have one team of people. So, it’s an alignment to get into the way the artist is thinking about their own work. There is an industry tendency to spend a lot of work on an artist’s latest album for good reason. But in the world we live in today, an artist’s older works can be reactivated very quickly in tandem with the release of a new album. We hired Tom largely because he’s had a little bit of everything. He has worked in catalog, frontline at Universal, in management. He’s got perspective from all these different angles.
What is happening with Concord’s theatrical division?
We own Rodgers and Hammerstein. We rep 30,000 theatrical rights. It’s a sneaky, large part of our business. It’s a very interesting corner of our business that we’ve built through acquisitions in the last five years. We did those acquisitions [starting in] 2018, and the challenge has been that a lot of our business is licensing to schools and universities that were impacted during Covid. We were also a producer in Hadestown, and an investor in Some Like It Hot. We are continuing to invest in new shows on Broadway and repping works that are going out on tour. There is a fair amount of investment going on there.
What are revenues going to come in at this year?
I think we’re going to come in around the mid-$600 million range. We’ve been growing pretty consistently.
How much debt does the company carry?
The ABS was $1.8 billion and then we just did the separate tranche with Apollo for $500 million. We have a revolver as well with a consortium of banks. I don’t remember that balance, but we did not use up all of our dry powder [on the Round Hill deal]. One of the reasons we wanted to do the initial bond offering with Apollo was that we thought there was an opportunity to go back to the market when we wanted to finance acquisitions. We think there is going to be a rinse and repeat component to our access to that market.
Round Hill Music Royalty Fund’s shareholders voted on Wednesday to sell the fund’s assets to U.S.-based music company Concord in a deal that values the company at $469 million. Of the 69% of Round Hill Music shareholders who were eligible to vote, 99% voted to approve the sale, which fund chairman Robert Naylor called a […]
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.
Concord, under the name Alchemy Copyrights, has agreed to acquire the share capital of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Ltd in a proposed deal jointly announced on Friday that values the rights in the fund at worth nearly $469 million.
If approved, Concord would acquire the music rights that sit in the publicly-listed Round Hill Music Royalty Fund, which includes 51 catalogs and roughly 150,000 songs by artists like Alice In Chains, Bonnie Tyler, Bush, Bruno Mars, Céline Dion, Lady A, Louis Armstrong, The Offspring, Carrie Underwood, The Supremes, Wilson Pickett and Whitesnake.
Launched in 2010, Round Hill Music was among the first catalog funds to raise money from instititutional investors to acquire and administer song catalogs. But since its November 2022 listing on the London Stock Exchange in November 2020, Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Ltd. has, like its peers Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd., struggled with a declining stock price this year as high inflation and interest rates have pressured alternative investments.
News of the Round Hill-Concord deal,reported earlier by Reuters, sent the fund’s stock up nearly 65% on Friday to $1.13 a share from its previous close of $0.69.
Under the proposed deal terms, Round Hill shareholders would receive $1.15 in cash per share, which values the ordinary share capital of the company at roughly $468.8 million.
While Concord’s proposed cash offer represents a premium price, it still represents a discount of approximately 11.5% to Round Hill Music Fund’s economic net asset value per share of $1.30.
In 2022, Round Hill reported its overall group revenues rose 32% year over year to $32.4 million and its portfolio’s fair value rose 13% $602.6 million.
The deal will be put to a shareholder vote at Round HIll’s nex general meeting on Oct. 18 and needs 75% of votes to pass. A group of shareholders led by Josh Gruss, Round Hill Music co-founder and CEO, who own roughly 33% of the fund’s shares have already signaled they will vote in favor of the deal.
“The Board is pleased to present this opportunity for liquidity at a premium to both the share price and the IPO price, as well as at a narrow discount to economic net asset value per share,” commented Robert Naylor, chairman of RHM. “The recommended offer represents excellent value for shareholders.”
Concord CEO Bob Valentine said that since its 2020 IPO, RHM has built an “impressive portfolio” of songs that “stand the test of time” and asserted that his company is “well positioned to maximise the value of this portfolio for all of the songwriters and artists within it.”
He added, “This offer enables RHM shareholders to realise their investment in the business at an attractive premium to the undisturbed share price, while the transaction provides an opportunity to create value for all stakeholders.”
Pulse Music Group, which already houses music publishing and artist management arms, has started Pulse Records with Concord. Pulse Music Group co-CEOs Scott Cutler and Josh Abraham, along with Ashley Calhoun, president and head of creative, will lead the label, which will be part of Universal Music Group-distributed Concord Label Group.
The deal builds on a partnership between Pulse and Concord started in 2020 when Concord’s music publishing division acquired a stake in Pulse Music Group to form a joint venture that included Concord administering Pulse’s catalog and future signings.
Pulse is in talks with a number of acts to join its label roster. “We have been looking to grow our Pulse Music Group brand into the records space for a while now. Given our background as producers and songwriters in our own right, we bring a unique perspective to working in the label space—but we knew we had to get our footing right,” said Abraham and Cutler in a joint statement. “Now with the 15-year success of our publishing division, a company we have built from scratch, we are surrounded by the very best in emerging talent and a highly curated roster.”
The pair added, “With Pulse Records we will continue to set a very high artistic bar. In addition to launching emerging talent, we have plans to work with artists that helped to redefine genres with whom we have created very strong relationships over the years that will soon be coming out of their existing deals… It takes the right business partners to build a business like this, and we couldn’t be happier to have the backing of Concord and the support and business acumen of its senior leadership team as we continue to grow Pulse Music Group and launch Pulse Records.”
Bob Valentine, Concord’s incoming CEO (he replaces outgoing CEO Scott Pascucci, effective July 1), added, “Scott, Josh, Ashley, and the team at Pulse have been a great collaborator with Concord in publishing some of the highest charting songs in the world. Globally recognized as one of the leading frontline creative teams and first-class incubators for culturally relevant music, Pulse Music Group is a company that Concord continues to greatly admire, and we couldn’t ask for more exceptional business partners as we work to launch Pulse Records.”
Pulse Records’ growing staff also includes senior vp/head of marketing Lauryn Caldwell, who joins from mtheory, where she was vp of marketing and artist partnerships. Sarah Ahmed, who was previously senior director of marketing at Atlantic Records, comes aboard as vp of marketing. Tazita Makuria, who joined Pulse in 2022, has been named vp of creative for both the publishing and label divisions, while former Almo Records exec Bel Masbahi will serve as creative director of A&R for both divisions.
Pulse Music Group, which Cutler, Abraham and songwriter Anne Preven started in 2007, has been on a hot streak lately. Isaac “Zac” De Boni & Michael “Finatik” Mulé (who goes by FNZ) took home song of the year honors at BMI Pop Awards for The Kid LAROI & Justin Bieber’s “Stay,” while Tyler Johnson won the Ivor Novello Award for co-writing for Harry Styles’ “Stay.” Angel Lopez co-wrote “First Class” by Jack Harlow, while Gregory “Aldae” Hein co-wrote Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers.”
During the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) annual meeting on Wednesday, the trade organization announced its latest board of directors.
The latest executive board includes: Jody Gerson (Chair and CEO, Universal Music Publishing Group), Keith Hauprich (general counsel and executive vp, business and legal affairs, North America, BMG), Laurent Hubert (CEO, Kobalt), Carianne Marshall (co-chair and COO, Warner Chappell Music), Jon Platt (chair and CEO, Sony Music Publishing), Jim Selby (chief publishing executive, Concord).
Other board members include: Marti Cuevas (founder and president, Mayimba Music), Justin Kalifowitz (executive chairman, Downtown Music Publishing), Golnar Khosrowshahi (founder and CEO, Reservoir), Jody Klein (owner and CEO, ABKCO), Kenny MacPherson (CEO, Hipgnosis Songs Group), Chip McLean (svp, head of business affairs and business development, Disney Music Group), Larry Mestel (founder and CEO, Primary Wave), Michael Molinar (general manager, Big Machine Music), Jeff Pachman (general manager, Domino Publishing), Ralph Peer II (executive chair, peermusic), Irwin Robinson (vp, Richmond Organization), Jon Singer (chairman, Spirit Music Group).
The 20-member board comprises an executive board featuring leaders from the six largest companies according to revenue from the previous year, a general board of 12 additional publishing leaders, and two songwriters representing creatives’ point of view. To represent songwriters, the board elected Laura Veltz to replace Liz Rose, who recently reached her term limit of four years. Ross Golan is returning as the other songwriter representative.
Domino’s Pachman is this year’s only new publisher to join the board, replacing Leeds Levy.
All board members receive equal voting power and will meet four times annually to oversee the activity and budget of the NMPA. The board plays a major role in determining the legal actions of the trade organization, which is known to fight aggressively for fair pay and licensing for compositions.
This year, the NMPA is focused on new legal action it is taking against Twitter, which was also announced at Wednesday’s event. According to the complaint, the NMPA — along with over a dozen of music publishers — is suing Twitter over allegations of widespread copyright infringement, seeking as much as $255 million in damages.
Concord CEO Scott Pascucci is stepping down effective June 30 after helming the fifth biggest music company for a decade. Bob Valentine, who ascended to president in 2021 from CFO, will become Concord’s new CEO.
Additionally, Concord’s chief label officer Tom Whalley will also vacate his role but will continue to be involved as founder of Loma Vista Recordings, his joint venture with Concord. Pascucci, who remains on Concord’s board of directors, and Whalley will be inaugural members of Concord’s new advisory board.
“I started my career in the music business 30-plus years ago for the simple reason that I love music, and I discovered along the way that I enjoy building businesses and leading teams of people,” said Pascucci in a statement. “Thanks to [Wood Creek founding partner] Brett Hellerman, I was given the opportunity to do all of those things at Concord. In 10 years, we have built a company that matters in the music industry, a place that cares about its employees, artists and writers, and that is well-positioned for the future. I am proud of all that we have accomplished. I look forward to continuing on the board of directors, to help guide the company forward under Bob’s leadership, while also having more time to focus on my interests in film and social impact initiatives.”
(Wood Creek Capital Management bought Concord from Village Roadshow in 2013. Concord is now a private company funded by institutional capital and Concord’s management team.)
Pascucci’s announcement comes several weeks after Concord launched Concord Music Royalties, LLC Series 2022-1, a $1.8 billion asset-backed security that will allow further growth through funding reserve accounts, paying down debt and other uses.
“It positions us beautifully for the future,” Pascucci tells Billboard of the security. “It has given us significant additional capital for growth while also dramatically broadening the base of institutional lenders who are now familiar with the company.”
The succession plan has been in the works since 2019. “An orderly succession in key positions is critical to the stability and future growth of the company, as evidenced by the smooth transition from Jake Wisely to Jim Selby as chief publishing executive a few years ago,” Pascucci continues. “ My decision to move out of the CEO position and to stay on the board was made over 2 years ago, at which time Bob moved into the role of president.”
Bob Valentine
Elena Goss/Courtesy of Concord
“Scott has made the transition from CFO to president remarkably smooth and easy,” Valentine says. “As CFO I was used to a particular flow of helping to finance our acquisitions and new productions; in stepping into the president’s role, I needed to get into the rhythm of the creative process outside of a purely financial lens. Scott’s extraordinarily patient, and he’s made sure to loop me in on some of the many day-to-day things that I wouldn’t have been in the middle of as CFO. Also, the senior team, most of whom are in Nashville, work very closely with each other. That makes a transition like this easier than they tend to be for a company.”
Valentine’s history with the company precedes Pascucci’s. He joined Norman Lear’s ACT III Communications in 1999 when it acquired Concord Records. He left in 2001 but returned in 2005 as CFO.
“I have had the privilege of helping to build Concord into the company that it is today ever since Norman Lear and his business partner Hal Gaba had the extraordinary foresight to buy a small, independent jazz record label in the same year that Napster was invented,” Valentine said in a statement. “The journey since then has been scary, thrilling, surprising, and incredibly rewarding.”
Valentine tells Billboard that Concord will proceed on its current path. “We’ll continue to focus on our core mission: to champion artists, elevate voices and impact culture. We can’t do any one of those without the other two. At the heart of everything we do is artistry; it’s our job to identify it, elevate it, and ultimately impact culture with it,” he says. That has been and will continue to be true for everything we focus on, whether it’s furthering our frontline label division’s breadth and depth, acquiring iconic songs and recordings, signing new and exciting songwriters, or licensing and co-producing theatrical works. I’m also excited about our Concord Originals segment, which aims to develop and adapt some of our music and theatrically based works (past and present) for film and television.”
Concord’s catalog consists of more than one million songs, composed works, plays, musicals and active recordings and includes works from Phil Collins, Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Fogerty, Daft Punk, Miles Davis, Danny Elfman, Evanescence, The Fania All-Stars, Genesis, Imagine Dragons, Isaac Hayes, James Taylor, Jewel, Joan Sebastian, Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, Cyndi Lauper, Little Richard, Nikki Six, Otis Redding, R.E.M., Rodgers & Hammerstein, Pete Seeger, St. Vincent, Taking Back Sunday, Ryan Tedder, The Traveling Wilburys, The Vince Guaraldi Trio and Hans Zimmer.
Headquartered in Nashville, Concord has additional offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Berlin, Melbourne and Miami. Concord also has staff in Auckland, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto.
As chief label officer, Whalley oversees frontline imprints Fantasy Records, Concord Records, Concord Jazz, Rounder Records, Loma Vista Recordings, Easy Eye Sound, KIDZ BOP and Fearless Records.
“In 2014, I found a great partnership with Scott Pascucci and Concord,” says Whalley, who co-founded Interscope Records and was Warner Bros. Records chairman/CEO from 2001 to 2010. “That partnership helped build a very important independent label, Loma Vista Recordings. It has been an added bonus to serve as the chief label officer for frontline labels at Concord. I am very proud of what we have accomplished.”
Following Whalley’s departure, Concord will create a new role that will oversee the entire recorded music division, including frontline and catalog operations.
The new advisory board, which will be unveiled this fall, will also include Wisely, as well as other members from allied fields, such as music, film, theater and technology. It will act as a resource for best practices and new business opportunities for Concord.
Pascucci’s news comes a week after the announcement that Hartwig Masuch, CEO of BMG, the fourth biggest music company, is leaving at the end of the year after 15 years at the company. He will be replaced by BMG CFO Thomas Coesfeld.
In a happy ending to one of the music industry’s grimmest and longest tales, John Fogerty has gained worldwide control of his Creedence Clearwater Revival publishing rights after a half-century struggle.
At a time when Fogerty’s peers such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Neil Young are selling their copyrights for hundreds of millions of dollars, the iconic Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has done the opposite: He recently bought a majority interest in the global publishing rights to his historic CCR song catalog from Concord for an undisclosed sum. The treasure trove includes such rock classics as “Proud Mary,” “Down on the Corner,” Fortunate Son,” “Bad Moon Rising” “Up Around the Bend” and “Green River.”
Concord has owned the rights since 2004 when the company bought Saul Zaentz’s Fantasy Records. One of the first moves Concord made was to reinstate and increase Fogerty’s artist royalties, which Fogerty had relinquished to Zaentz in 1980 to get out of his Fantasy deal and had not received in 25 years.
Concord retains the CCR master recordings already in its catalog and will continue to administer Fogerty’s share of the publishing catalog for an unspecified limited time.
Seated on the spacious patio of his Southern California home with his golden retriever, Creedy (short for Creedence) by his side, Fogerty, 77, admits gaining control of his copyrights is a day he never thought would come. “I tried really hard,” he says to get them back in the decades since he signed his label and publishing deal in 1968 with Fantasy but suffered setback after setback at the hands of Zaentz, who died in 2014.
“I’m the dad [of these songs]. I created them,” he says. “They never should have been taken away in the first place. And that hijacking left such a massive hole in me.” With the support and love of his manager and wife of 36 years, Julie Fogerty, he says he had gotten over the anger that plagued him for decades over Zaentz’s treatment, but the longing to own his songs never went away.
John Fogerty
Julie Fogerty
“The happiest way to look at it is, yeah, it isn’t everything,” he says of acquiring a majority, but not full ownership. “It’s not a 100% win for me, but it’s sure better than it was. I’m really kind of still in shock. I haven’t allowed my brain to really, actually, start feeling it yet.” Fogerty, who had retained his writer’s share of his CCR copyrights, also owns the masters and publishing to his solo material, including such hits as “Centerfield,” “Rockin’ All Over the World,” and “Almost Saturday Night.”
The reclaimed CCR copyrights number more than 65, mostly written by Fogerty during the group’s short, but extremely prolific career. As one of America’s seminal rock bands, CCR had a tremendous run, including landing five top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 between 1969 and 1970 before breaking up in 1972. Their popularity continues with new generations: CCR’s Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits, released in 1976, has spent 622 non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200, the fifth highest of any album on the chart. More than 50 years after its initial release, CCR hit “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Digital Songs Sales Chart in 2021.
Keep On Chooglin’
The latest effort to gain ownership of his publishing began 18 months ago as the Fogertys realized that under U.S. copyright law, rights to his compositions would begin reverting back to him in a few years as the songs turned 56 years old, but that wouldn’t have included rights outside the U.S. “Julie began to think larger and [told Concord], ‘John would like to buy his songs. He’d like to figure out a way’,” Fogerty says.
“While John is having the time of his life out there on the road, with his kids playing with him and celebrating this music, [I thought], why can’t we take those few years left [before the titles revert] and not have them give them to us, but we’ll buy them,” Julie Fogerty says. “Whatever the value plus a little bonus. We’ll figure out how to come up with the money and we’ll just buy that. [Concord’s] not going to lose because they’ll have the value.”
Concord initially declined and Fogerty was once again resigned. “I was sort of a bump on the log going, ‘Never going to happen,’” he says.
Julie Fogerty then brought in Irving Azoff, who had briefly managed Fogerty more than 20 years ago, to help mediate. She says Azoff called Concord chairman and CEO Scott Pascucci and said, “‘Scott, you’ve made so much money on Fogerty. Do you want to be known in the music business as Saul Zaentz or [revered late Warner Brothers Records head] Mo Ostin?’ And I think he heard that. And [Concord president] Bob Valentine has been incredible as well.’” Azoff encouraged the Fogertys to pursue worldwide rights, advising they would have to give up an ownership percentage in order to do so.
“John Fogerty is one of music’s greatest treasures. Now, finally after decades of suffering, I’m thrilled to see John regain ownership of his music,” Azoff tells Billboard in an email. “And kudos to Concord for understanding that doing the right thing for artists is great for their business as well.”
“John’s songs are some of the greatest compositions of the 20th century,” Valentine said in a statement. “We’ve been honored to own and represent these works ever since we acquired Fantasy in 2004. Given the unique set of circumstances around the history of John’s relationship with Fantasy, we were more than happy to oblige John and Julie in working out an agreement for these songs to revert back to him early. And we’re profoundly grateful that John has agreed to partner with Concord for the remaining worldwide copyrights on the share of these songs that we will retain.”
Fogerty was represented by Barnes & Thornburg partner Jason Karlov and associate Amanda Taber. Reed Smith’s Steven Sessa and Josh Love represented Concord.
The winding journey to reclaim his rights and undo the damage from his contentious relationship with Zaentz has been long and, at times, debilitating for Fogerty.
In addition to taking his artist royalties for decades, in 1985, Zaentz sued Fogerty for $144 million, alleging the artist’s then current hit, “The Old Man Down the Road,” ripped off CCR’s “Run Through the Jungle.” Even though Fogerty had written both songs, Zaentz claimed Fogerty was now plagiarizing a song Zaentz owned. After Fogerty won, his effort to be reimbursed for his $1.3 million in legal fees went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1993.
For years, Fogerty refused to play CCR songs live, unable to stomach Zaentz making money off his performances, but he softened his stance in 1987 with a little prodding from Bob Dylan. While at revered North Hollywood, Calif., club the Palomino, Fogerty, Dylan and George Harrison joined headliner Taj Mahal on stage. “The crowd started asking for ‘Proud Mary,’” Fogerty recalls. “Bob looked at me and said, ‘John, if you don’t do ‘Proud Mary,’ everybody’s gonna think it’s a Tina Turner song,’” referencing Ike & Tina Turner’s 1971 cover. “It’s Bob Dylan, for crying out loud. In my mind, I was still committed that I wasn’t going to do those songs, but I decided I guess I can give that up for three minutes.” Later that year, Fogerty began incorporating CCR songs back into his set.
‘They Tried to Erase Him’
Fogerty last tried in 1989 to buy his publishing when he and Zaentz sat face-to-face with legendary rock empresario Bill Graham acting as a mediator. They agreed on a sum, but then months later in final negotiations in the early ’90s, Fogerty says Zaentz doubled the price to a figure Fogerty couldn’t afford. Fogerty went to Warner Chappell and asked if the publishing company would go in on a deal with him. “I met with the top guy, and he looked at me and said, ‘It’s not sustainable.’ That might have been, at least as business kinds of things go, the worst day of my life,” Fogerty says. “I don’t think I could even impart to [Julie] how final that was: ‘There’s no hope for you. You’re dead.’”
He had a freeing revelation shortly thereafter when on a jog, he was listening to a radio therapist counsel a woman who had been with a man who refused to commit to marriage. The therapist told the women her boyfriend was never going to change, and she needed to understand that. “The light goes on in my head as I’m listening and I just fell on the ground,” Fogerty says. “I actually started laughing. I realized it was never going to happen. It was a horrible realization. Anyway, that was the end of that: Saul was a jerk and will be eternally that and, in some way or fashion, I got over that.”
When asked if he now would pursue ownership of his CCR masters, Fogerty says, “My heart of hearts would love if that ever happened, but I’m not actively sitting around worrying about that. The fact that I didn’t own my own songs was much more bothersome to me because of the treatment that I received.”
For now, Fogerty, whose last release was the socio-political track, “Weeping in the Promised Land,” in 2021, is focused on playing live. With his two sons in his touring band, he says, “playing is more joyful now than in any time in my life…. The last years of Creedence got to be like every band that dissolves, it was so tense. I mean, I miss my brother, [Creedence rhythm guitarist] Tom, who passed at a time when we were not really in each other’s lives [in 1990]. I’m looking forward to getting to heaven and playing in God’s band and Tom will be there.”
With control over how his music is used now, Julie Fogerty says she’d like “to take these iconic songs and reintroduce them to the new generation because I think the songs will be around forever,” adding there’s talk of both a biopic and a documentary about Fogerty. “But it’s mostly I think just connecting John to those songs. There were a lot of years where he felt like they tried to erase him.”
For Concord’s part, which released Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall last year without Fogerty’s participation, Valentine tells Billboard he hopes regaining his copyrights “gives John a sense of closure for the years of the feelings that he’s had ever since he signed with Fantasy…. Also, hopefully, [with] that sense of peace that it’s a new beginning. We hope he will be reinvigorated and continue to do things that promote the catalog. It’s extraordinarily important — not only culturally as one of the greatest American bands ever, but it’s an important component of Concord’s legacy. We hope it gives him a feeling of partnership and moving forward in a way that makes him feel more invested in the songs and Creedence with us.”
As Fogerty moves into the next chapter with the “lingering specter” that has haunted him for so long finally gone, he says with a big grin, “I’m ready to feel really good about music.”
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online.
This was a year without splashy public offerings, like Universal Music Group’s last year and Warner Music Group’s the year before. Some of the biggest rights acquisitions of all time — for Bob Dylan’s and Bruce Springsteen’s recordings and publishing, and David Bowie’s publishing took place in those years, too. And the time when the biggest companies in the business could acquire their rivals may be over for the time being as well.
Rising interest rates put a chill on the catalog acquisition market and brought down valuations, but there was no shortage of investors for a seemingly never-ending supply of creators willing to take advantage of the streaming boom to part with their catalogs. The list of deals that didn’t even make this list includes various rights for the music of The Ramones, Justin Timberlake, Keith Urban, Louis Prima, Swedish House Mafia, Future and Blake Shelton.
Only two of the last year’s top 10 deals — ranked by dollar amount — didn’t involve a catalog changing hands. One was a reverse merger that made French streaming company Deezer a publicly traded company, while he other was Spotify’s latest acquisition to further its goal of becoming a one-stop destination for audio.
Concord sells asset-backed securities ($1.8 billion)
This month, Concord priced the biggest music-related asset-backed securitization in history: $1.8 billion of senior notes backed by a diversified catalog of music publishing and recorded music rights valued at $4.1 billion. Apollo’s Capital Solutions business structured the transaction and formed an investor syndicate led by Apollo-managed funds. JP Morgan was the co-structuring agent. Music-backed securitization was made famous in 1997 with $55 million of asset-backed securities, commonly referred to as Bowie Bonds, supported by royalties from Bowie’s recorded music catalog. Concord’s offering was significantly larger and diverse than Bowie’s: The catalog behind Concord’s bonds includes compositions and recordings by Phil Collins, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Daft Punk, Miles Davis, Imagine Dragons, Pink Floyd, Cyndi Lauper, Little Richard and James Taylor.
Brookfield Asset Management Invests in Primary Wave ($1.7 billion)
The biggest music industry deal of the year by dollar amount was something of a surprise. The 100-year-old Canadian asset manager Brookfield’s decision to put $1.7 billion into Primary Wave, an active buyer of music rights for nearly 17 years, came during a lull in the market. Rising interest rates were making music rights a less attractive investment, headline-grabbing acquisitions had slowed since the Fed began hiking rates in March and possible changes to tax treatment of catalog sales in 2022 culminated a busy 2021. Brookfield wasn’t discouraged by market forces, though. The two companies spent six months hashing out a deal, Brookfield managing partner Angelo Rufino told Billboard. Brookfield was attracted to Primary Wave’s model of employing marketing and branding experts to build the value of its acquisitions. He called Primary Wave CEO Larry Mestel “the best I’ve ever seen at leveraging brand extensions to supercharge the growth of these assets.”
Kobalt sells majority interest to Francisco Partners ($750 million)
Kobalt has been selling off assets left and right in recent years. It sold its two investment funds that owned music assets — one went to Hipgnosis Song Management for $323 million in 2020, the other to KKR and Dundee Partners for $1.1 billion in 2021 (which resulted in the Chord Music Partners bond offering this year, see below) — and Sony Music purchased Kobalt’s independent distributor and label services provider, AWAL, as well as its neighboring rights business. These moves allowed Kobalt to pay off its debt and finish 2021 with $315 million in cash. This year, Kobalt sold a piece of itself when tech-focused investment firm Francisco Partners, along with Dundee Partners and Matt Pincus’ MUSIC, bought a majority stake in the company for $750 million.
KKR sells asset-backed security ($732.5 million)
The technical sounding Hi-Fi Music IP Issuer II L.P., Series 2022-1, was a bond offering by Chord Music Partners in February, backed by a music catalog valued at $1.13 billion. What the bond lacked in curb appeal it made up for in sheer dollar volume after raising $732.5 million for Chord Music Partners, a venture of KKR Credit Advisors and Dundee Partners. The music publishing catalog behind Hi-Fi Music offering — about 62,000 titles in all — was purchased from Kobalt three months earlier. The According to a report by ratings agency KBRA, the Hi-Fi offering is backed by over 65,000 compositions and master recordings and related assets and includes artists and songwriters such as The Weeknd, Maroon 5, Childish Gambino, Dua Lipa, Mumford & Sons and Stevie Nicks.
Concord acquires Genesis, Phil Collins and Mike + The Mechanics rights ($335 million to $375 million)
Phil Collins’ and Genesis’s The Last Domino tour, which concluded at London’s O2 Arena in March, was a reminder of how beloved the 71-year-old Collins remains 47 years after he took over vocal duties when original Genesis singer Peter Gabriel departed in 1975. In that warm afterglow, Concord acquired the recording catalogs and music publishing rights of Collins, as well as Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford for the years they were in Genesis and Mike + The Mechanics, for something in the range of $335 million to $375 million. (Former Genesis members Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett did not participate in the deal.) Collins’ solo material, focused on a string of four multi-platinum albums from 1981 to 1989, has 403 million streams in the U.S. this year (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate. In addition, Collins’ catalog has nearly 311,000 airplay spins this year. The acquisition includes Collins’ signature solo hit “In The Air Tonight,” from the 1981 album Face Value, that counts for more than a quarter of his year-to-date on-demand streams, and “That’s All,” a No.6 hit on the Hot 100 from the 1983 album Genesis. “Everyone at Concord feels the weight of the cultural significance of this remarkable collection of works,” Concord president Bob Valentine said when the deal was announced.
Sting sells entire publishing catalog to Universal Music Group ($360 million)
Universal Music Group isn’t the most active buyer of music catalogs, but it makes a splash when it decides to pull the trigger. In 2020, it purchased Bob Dylan’s publishing catalog for an estimated $400 million. In February, UMG acquired Sting’s entire publishing catalog, including his compositions with The Police (Sting was the sole songwriter of the group’s most popular songs, such as “Roxanne,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”) as well as his solo material (“Fields of Gold,” “Englishman in New York,” “Shape of My Heart,” “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”). Because UMG already has the master recordings to both the Police and Sting’s solo releases, buying the publishing catalog brings both rights under one roof. That should facilitate licensing and enhance UMG’s ability to generate income from the catalog. Billboard believes Sting’s representatives were shopping the catalog with a $360 million price tag, making the deal the largest for a single artist in 2022. Across both the Police and Sting’s solo releases, the catalog generated 469 million on-demand streams in the U.S. in 2022 (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate.
HarbourView Equity Partners acquires SoundHouse ($325 million)
HarborView Equity Partners burst onto the music business scene in 2021, led by founder and CEO Sherrese Clark Soares, an alum of Morgan Stanley and Providence Equity Partners-backed Tempo Music, and $1 billion backing by Apollo Global Management. Among its initial deals were the publishing catalog of Latin star Luis Fonsi that includes a share of the global hit “Despascito,” the master recording income of country star Brad Paisley, the publishing catalog of country group Lady A and the publishing catalog of Dre & Vidal, the songwriting and production duo who has worked with Alicia Keys, Justin Bieber and Mary J. Blige. HarborView’s biggest-single acquisition is an unknown name with considerable star-power: SoundHouse, the owner of about 20 master recording catalogs and the assets of indie contemporary Christian label InPop. That gave HarborView the rights to some master recordings by the likes of Tech N9ne, Trey Songz, George Jones, Whiskey Myers and Tenth Avenue North. Billboard estimates the deal was worth about $325 million. SoundHouse’s 2021 income was said to be about $24 million.
Sony Music acquired Som Livre ($255 million)
Brazil’s largest domestic record label hit the market as its parent company, Grupo Globo, went through organization restructuring. Announced in 2021, Sony Music’s acquisition Som Livre was finalized in Feb. 2022 after Brazilian regulators said there would be “low market concentration and low barriers to entry” from the merger, despite Sony already having the top record label market share in Brazil and Som Livre being third behind Universal Music Brasil. Som Livre is home to more than 80 artists, including sertanejo act Jorge & Mateus, forró star Wesley Safadão and rising stars like Israel & Rodolffo. Domestic music accounts for 70% of total music consumption in Brazil, the world’s 11th largest recorded music market in 2021, according to the IFPI.
Sony Music acquired Bob Dylan’s recorded music catalog ($200 million)
Thirteen months after Universal Music Group acquired Bob Dylan’s songwriting catalog, Sony Music picked up the bard’s recorded music catalog. Sony has not disclosed the terms of the transaction, but Billboard estimates the catalog generates roughly $16 million per year globally and is worth $200 million or more. The catalog covers all of Dylan’s recordings — 39 studio albums and 16 compilations in the Bootleg series — as well as unreleased material that could be released on future collections. (Separately, Primary Wave acquired Dylan’s share of the master and neighboring rights royalties from the Traveling Wilburys supergroup.) It makes sense that Dylan’s recordings ended up with Sony. The artist spent almost his entire career at Columbia Records, save two albums, Planet Waves and Before the Flood, both released by David Geffen’s Asylum Records in 1974 but distributed by Sony for decades. Dylan’s catalog amassed 313.5 million on-demand streams in 2022 (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate, and provides Sony with ample opportunities for licensing for film, television and advertisements (Airbnb used his track “Shelter From The Storm” from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks in a television ad this year). He used his return to Columbia in 1974 to gain ownership of his recordings, according to Dylan: A Biography by Bob Spitz.
Universal Music Group acquires Neil Diamond Catalog ($145 million)
In February, Universal Music Group announced a deal to acquire Neil Diamond’s song and master recording catalogs, reuniting Diamond’s non-UMG work with music released through UMG’s MCA Records during the artist’s successful 1968 to 1972 streak. Diamond’s catalog includes “Sweet Caroline,” “Cracklin Rosie” and “Forever iIn Blue Jeans.” His songwriting catalog includes compositions for other artists that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees (1966); “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Barbra Streisand (1978, co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman); and “Red, Red Wine” by UB40 (1988). Additionally, the recording of “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” by Urge Overkill has an indelible place in pop culture for its use in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction. The trove of material included 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album and archival video. The deal also includes the rights to release any future music by Diamond should he return to the studio. Billboard estimates the deal was worth about $145 million.
Deezer’s reverse merger with SPAC I2PO ($143 million)
Deezer was one of two music companies to go public in 2022 through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in April before the SPAC craze fizzled in the second half of the year. (The other was Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based streaming service. A third, wholesale distribution giant Alliance Entertainment, plans to complete a reverse merger with Adara Acquisition Corp.) The reverse merger with French company I2PO, which traded on the Euronext Paris exchange, provided Deezer with 135 million euros and valued Deezer at 1.08 billion euros ($1.17 billion at the time). The money came through a PIPE (private investment in public equity) subscribed by most of Deezer’s existing shareholders, including Access Industries, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, French telecom company Orange, Kingdom Holdings, Eurazeo and Xavier Niel. After investors poured money into blank check companies in 2020 and 2021 in pursuit of companies to take public, SPAC deals are increasingly rare these days. Among the many SPACs to end their search and return funds to shareholders are Music Acquisition Corp, which raised $230 million in Feb. 2021, and Liberty Media’s $575 million Liberty Media Acquisition Corporation.
Spotify acquired audiobook distributor Findaway ($122 million)
Findaway was neither Spotify’s priciest acquisition — it paid more for podcast companies The Ringer and Gimlet and tech platforms Anchor and Megaphone — nor was it the splashiest deal the music streaming giant has made in its roughly 15-year history. But buying the Ohio-based audiobook distributor was a pivotal moment in the company’s years-long transition from a music platform to a broader audio platform. With its share price down 68.1% year to date and investors anxious for profits, Spotify is betting that being a single destination for all things audio is a better strategy than focusing solely on music. The more ways Spotify can keep people listening, the idea goes, the longer consumers will engage with the platform , which in turn will funnels more people from the free version to the subscription service. Plus, audiobook margins are about double what Spotify gets for licensing music. Audiobooks also fit neatly with Spotify’s ongoing battle with Apple over the latter’s 30% share of in-app purchases and subscription revenue. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s PR push in recent months has been aided — and overshadowed — by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s public takedown of Apple over the same in-app fees.
