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Pophouse

It’s an overcast Saturday afternoon in Miami, and Axel Hedfors seems in his natural habitat while eating sushi on the patio restaurant of a luxe beachside hotel. Hours from now, the producer — known to most as Axwell — will play the main stage at Ultra Music Festival, a show he’s been prepping for in his hotel room since arriving in Florida.  
This set will contain classics from Axwell’s solo catalog, along with his work with Swedish House Mafia and the catalog of his namesake label, Axtone. It will also be the first time he’s played Ultra as a solo artist and his first Ultra set since selling the Axtone catalog to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment in January. 

This sale included approximately 200 songs spanning the last 20 years, including hits by Supermode, Steve Angello, Laidback Luke, Don Diablo, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, CamelPhat, Kölsch and big room-classics like Ivan Gough & Feenixpawl’s “In My Mind” and Axwell’s era-defining remix of this same song. Pophouse, which also acquired Swedish House Mafia’s master recordings and publishing catalog in 2022, has acquired both Axtone’s back catalog and the label itself, with Axwell staying on permanently as its founding partner and creative advisor.  

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While Axwell and his team decline to disclose the sale price, the congratulatory handshakes he gets from acquaintances at the restaurant indicate the deal was a good one.  

Axwell says the cash infusion from Pophouse has enabled him and his team to operate with “more muscle.” He cites the Axtone & Friends pool party that happened a few nights prior down the street in South Beach as something Pophouse helped pay for, allowing for a splashier event than they might have otherwise been able to afford.

“I know before that we would have been a bit more on a budget,” he says, “and now we were less on a budget, which is nice. There’s opportunity [with Pophouse]. If we have ideas and want to do something differently, we can with their help.” 

The sale also made sense given Axwell’s longstanding relationship with Per Sundin, the CEO of Pophouse and former president of Universal Music Nordics. “It’s not some anonymous fund,” Axwell says. “This is somebody we know, and that made me feel like this was worth exploring. Per appreciates music, so he’s not just going to destroy it. He’s going to be respectful about it.” 

The sale happened at a good time for Axwell, who acknowledges that he and the team were “kind of maybe stuck in the old routine” of signing records. Given that generating hits has become harder for labels of all genres in the streaming and TikTok eras, Axtone had, like so many other labels, become more focused on volume than Axwell might have liked. 

“It’s a small company on a budget trying to make every release recoup and work out financially,” he says. “Then we picked up the pace a little bit, and obviously not all records get noticed in today’s climate. A lot of records don’t do anything, because it’s so much harder these days to get them noticed. Then a lot of records become a project you just do for love, rather than earning. You have one record that pays for 20 other records.” 

This strategy had evolved significantly since Axwell launched Axtone in 2005 as a way to untether himself from other peoples’ timelines. “I was tired of dealing with other labels,” he says. “Back then you had to send the CD, and they were like, ‘Maybe we can release it in three months.’ I was fed up with not releasing ourselves, so starting the label was an amazing move.” 

This move proved especially prescient as Axtone clocked hits that distinguished Axwell’s taste as a curator and skills as a solo artist as he rose in tandem with the Swedish House Mafia rocket. He says many classics from the Axtone catalog, like Supermode’s “Tell Me Why” (which samples Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy”), still generate roughly 100,000 streams a day, partially because they’re featured on big Spotify and Apple Music playlists — placement that almost assures they’ll never fall below a certain daily stream rate.   

This, no doubt, made the Axtone catalog especially attractive to Pophouse, a company focused on using acquired music in new IP and brand development. The company’s success stories include the long-running ABBA Voyage show in London, which is set to the music of the famous Swedish disco pop quartet, who appear during the performance in hologram form. ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus is also a co-founder of Pophouse, which announced in March that it raised a total of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to invest in catalog acquisitions and create entertainment experiences around those music rights.

“Obviously, I wouldn’t mind them doing an ABBA kind of thing with dance music,” says Axwell. “A show [that features] not only my music would be great, because obviously Pophouse also has Avicii’s music, Swedish House Mafia’s music. It could be something interesting.” (Pophouse acquired a 75% stake in Avicii’s recordings and publishing catalog in 2022.)

Axwell is consulting with Pophouse on any projects Axtone music might be involved in, with the business partners currently planning a box set to commemorate the label’s 20th anniversary this year. The package feels particularly well-timed given that, as Axwell says, “what we’re noticing is that a lot of the old catalog means a lot to the new generation.” 

“When you put on ‘Calling’ or ‘Reload’ or my ‘In My Mind’ remix, they just go,” he says, referencing EDM era hits he was involved with and adjacent to. “Some old records don’t continue to work; they kind of fade out. But these still pack a punch. It’s amazing that we managed to do something that lasts.” 

This point is proven extremely true a few hours later, when thousands of people stand in front of a fire-spitting Ultra main stage and sing along to classics including Axwell’s edit of Swedish House Mafia’s 2011 hit “Save The World,” the 2017 Axwell / Ingrosso smash “More than You Know” and inevitably and blissfully, the trio’s all time classic “Don’t You Worry Child,” which he follows with their 2022 hit “When Heaven Takes You Home” and 2010’s “One (Your Name).” “That was fun,” he tells the audience while standing on the decks at the end of the set, “and you are beautiful.”

This is Axwell’s first time playing the festival’s biggest stage as a solo act, though he has a long history at this site through his work with Swedish House Mafia. The group’s Ultra mythology includes ending their massive farewell tour here in 2013, then reuniting at the festival five years later. When asked if he feels any kind of way about playing Ultra Miami on his own, Axwell says he feels “like Seb and Steve are always with me, because of the songs.” 

Beyond this psychospiritual connection, Axwell spent time in the studio with Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello fairly recently as the trio continues hashing out new Swedish House Mafia music. Last November, Angello told Billboard that the trio scrapped the second album they’d been working on as a follow-up to their 2022 LP Paradise Again.  

Axwell confirms that while he’s “super proud” of Paradise Again — the first Swedish House Mafia album after an earlier run of monster singles — the guys aren’t currently working on an LP “because that’s a heavy process. I think it was something we wanted to do to have that in our lives. But now I think we want to go back to the spontaneousness of just doing one song and getting it out [when we want to], not in 12 months when the album is ready.” (He notes that Paradise Again was not included in Pophouse’s acquisition of the Swedish House Mafia masters, given that the 2022 deal was retroactive.) He also says that the trio will eventually “probably come back” to play Ultra Miami again, as the urge to do so “tickles after a while, you know?”

Axwell is also currently tinkering with his own forthcoming solo work. Famously meticulous — he’s been known to spend months on a single high hat sound and calls himself “the slowest person on earth” when it comes to making music — he says a lot of what he’s working on is roughly 80% finished. The final 20% of each song will take some time, he says, although he’s not sure how long. (One new song samples SNAP’s “The Power,” although he’s thus far had a difficult time clearing one of the samples used in the 1990 club anthem. He assures, however, that “I’m not giving up.”) When his music is finally complete, he foresees releasing it as a series of singles.  

In the meantime, Axwell’s life will remain, as he tells it, “a s—storm” of logistics that involve his own touring, flying around Europe with his wife for their kids’ competitive car races (one son is 11 and races go carts, while his 16-year-old competes in F4), and prepping for Tomorrowland 2025 dates with Swedish House Mafia and as a solo act. All in, life will continue on the same dance world megastar trajectory as it did before the Axtone sale, but now with a bit more financial padding and space to focus.

“The good thing for me is that I still make music,” he says, “so even though we sold the label, it’s not like this is a goodbye to my whole life.” 

Pophouse Entertainment, the Swedish catalog company behind the virtual live show ABBA Voyage, said on Monday it raised a total of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to invest in acquiring catalogs and entertainment experiences around those music rights.
The fundraise consists of 1 billion euros raised through a private equity fund, and 200 million euros ($216 million) raised through dedicated co-investment vehicles, where outside investors put money to work alongside the Fund in certain transactions. Roughly 30% of the fund has already been deployed into partnerships related to the acquisition of rights to songs by KISS, Cyndi Lauper, Avicii and Swedish House Mafia.

Founded by by ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus and Conni Jonsson, of the Swedish global investment firm EQT AB, Pophouse has been acquiring the publishing, recording and name, image and likeness rights to iconic pop catalogs and then building entertainment experiences around them, through theatrical and virtual shows, museums and movies.

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Pophouse’s playbook has been at work through productions like The Avicii Experience, a tribute museum to the late dance music producer that opened in his hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, in 2021; Mamma Mia! The Party, an interactive dinner party set in London theater modeled after a taverna from the Greek island of Skopelos; ABBA Voyage, the band’s wildly successful virtual show that uses ABBA-tars to digitally depict the foursome as they looked in 1979, and ABBA The Museum, which opened in 2013.

KISS, which sold its name and likeness rights to Pophouse, has hinted that a virtual performance of its songs could launch in Las Vegas in 2027.

“By investing across publishing, recording, and brand rights, Pophouse has created a uniquely attractive prospect not only for investors but also for artists, empowering them to explore and amplify their legacy to new generations of fans,” Pophouse managing partner Johan Lagerlöf, said in a statement.

Pophouse’s CEO is Per Sundin, the first music industry label executive to partner with Spotify when he at Universal Music Sweden and president of the labe’s Nordic region business. Jonsson recruiting Sundin to helm Pophouse with the intention of taking advantage of the external business opportunities music rights present in the streaming era.

“Facing unprecedented disruption caused by streaming and technology, music intellectual property presents a differentiated, lifetime opportunity for investors,” Jonsson said in a statement. “We are reshaping the entertainment industry by applying an active, value-add approach that unlocks future generations for fandom.” 

The Swedish company Pophouse has been a player in the rights market since 2022. Led by former Universal Music Sweden chief Per Sundin, they backed ABBA’s Voyage show in London, and acquired rights from Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.
Now the company has announced its first deal with a U.S. artist, the rainbow-haired pop icon Cyndi Lauper. The deal includes the majority share of Lauper’s publishing as well as her royalties from her recorded music. Lauper has sold more than 50 million records worldwide, with hits including “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” and “True Colors,” and she has writing credits on some of her biggest hits, including “Time After Time” and “She Bop.” (The deal does not include her Broadway music, which includes the hit show Kinky Boots.) The share acquired by Pophouse was not disclosed.

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Pophouse, which was founded in 2014 by investor Conni Jonsson and ABBA frontman Björn Ulvaeus, is known for trying to add value to its rights acquisitions with creative productions and installations, including ABBA Voyage in London, which uses virtual “ABBAtars” in a live musical show. It also operates the “Avicii Experience” museum in Stockholm, and it is working with KISS on its next avatar show.  

The deal announcement says that Pophouse will “create new content and experiences to enrich Cyndi Lauper’s catalogue for fans old and new,” although it does not provide specific details. As an ‘80s icon, though, Lauper would be ideal for a show or a museum that could appeal to a broad audience worldwide. Fans just want to have fun, after all.  

“Pophouse has impressed me with their commitment to maintaining and developing my professional life’s work and ensuring its legacy,” Lauper said in the press release about the deal. “Their creativity and vision, combined with my continued involvement via our unique joint venture is what is most exciting to me.” 

Pophouse did not say whether the deal includes name, image and likeness rights, although it will work with Lauper on a joint venture, which presumably has the permissions it needs to create installations or experiences around the pop star’s career. “We set ourselves apart through our emphasis on artist and brand development so that we can nurture the value of our investment,” Sundin said in the press release, “and we are pleased Cyndi endorses our vision for her remarkable catalogue of work.”