primary wave
Page: 2
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.
Primary Wave and the estate of James Brown are facing a new lawsuit that claims their $90 million catalog sale last year violated an agreement that the iconic singer had struck decades earlier with another company.
Announced in December, the sale saw Primary Wave scoop up a portion of Brown’s publishing rights, master royalty income and name/likeness rights from the singer’s estate – adding the “Soul Brother No. 1” to the likes of Whitney Houston and Prince in the company’s growing catalog.
But in a new lawsuit filed Tuesday (Nov. 15) in Manhattan federal court, David Pullman’s Pullman Group says the blockbuster sale represents a breach of a contract it struck with Brown way back in 1999 that guaranteed the company the right to broker any such deal in the future.
And Pullman says the breach was no small error: It’s demanding more than $11 million in damages from the Brown estate, and a whopping $125 million from Primary Wave.
“The Primary Wave transaction violated The Pullman Group’s exclusive rights under the exclusive engagement letter to arrange such asset sales for Brown and his estate,” Pullman’s lawyers wrote in their complaint.
In response to the allegations, a rep for the Brown estate told Billboard on Wednesday that the lawsuit “has no merit and the Estate and Trust intend to vigorously defend the action.” A rep for Primary Wave did not immediately return a request for comment.
Pullman is best known for creating so-called Bowie Bonds – a novel financial vehicle that offered investors the right to collect future royalties in return for a lump payment to an artist. He pioneered the arrangement with a $55 million deal with David Bowie in 1997, hence the name.
In the new lawsuit, Pullman Group says it created such a bond offering for Brown in 1999 to help the late singer deal with “financial difficulties,” which were spurred by his “spending habits and legal problems.” Under the terms of the deal, Brown received an up-front payment of $26 million in exchange for future royalties over a set period of time.
But crucially, Pullman’s lawsuit says the deal also guaranteed the company “exclusive rights to arrange all future refinancing or asset sales of Brown’s assets.” It says the that contractual sweetener was included because the deal was risky for Pullman and the company had already agreed to waive its normal up-front fees in Brown’s case.
But in December 2021, Pullman says it learned from media reports that Brown’s estate had reached a deal with Primary Wave. The agreement had been struck “secretly and behind The Pullman Group’s back,” and the estate had instead used a company called Shot Tower Capital to arrange the deal.
“By working for years in secret on the Primary Wave transaction, Primary Wave and Shot Tower Capital intentionally and maliciously interfered with The Pullman Group’s exclusive contractual rights,” the company’s lawyers wrote.
The lawsuit says Pullman would have been entitled to a 12.5% fee from any rights deal struck by Brown’s estate – meaning the estate owes the company $11.3 million from Primary Wave’s $90 million payment.
Pullman wants far steeper damages from Primary Wave and Shot Tower Capital. Accusing them of so-called tortious interference with a contract – meaning an outside party essentially induced someone to break their word – Pullman is seeking at least $125 million in damages from each company.
A rep for Shot Tower Capital did not immediately return a request for comment on the lawsuit’s accusations.
In a statement to Billboard, David Pullman said he and Brown had a “great mutually successful and beneficial relationship and friendship for years,” but that the current legal dispute had been caused by those running his estate.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
On the heels of their recent Billboard cover story, in which they detailed their acquisition of much of the Whitney Houston estate and catalog, Primary Wave Music has added to their collection of Whitney-related rights by acquiring an interest in much of the publishing catalog for Houston co-writers Boy Meets Girl. The duo, made up of Shannon Rubicam and George Merrill, played a hand in penning “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and “How Will I Know,” both of which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Included in the deal are the writer’s share of royalties from the two Houston cuts, as well as the duo’s successful self-released songs, including “Oh Girl” and “Waiting for A Star to Fall.” Under the agreement, Merrill and Rubicam will have access to Primary Wave’s marketing and branding teams, along with the company’s publishing infrastructure that includes licensing and synch opportunities.
The timing of the acquisition comes just ahead of the Dec. 21 release of the Houston biopic I Wanna Dance with Somebody, a major part of Primary Wave’s campaign to revitalize the Houston catalog. The company purchased a 50% stake in the singer’s publishing, master recording revenue, name, likeness and brand for an estimated $14 million in May 2019 and has been working on efforts to introduce or remind the public of Houston’s venerable legacy ever since, including with two new photo books, Funko! Pop dolls, Whitney-themed Peloton classes, a perfume line, a MAC makeup collection and more.
Rubicam and Merrill have worked as musical partners since the mid-1980s when both were hired to perform at a wedding. They subsequently formed Boy Meets Girl and released their first album in 1985, featuring the song “Oh Girl.” Soon after, the duo kickstarted their songwriting career by penning two of Houston’s biggest hits, earning them Grammys for song of the year in the process. The duo continued to release their own music as well, achieving top 5 success on the Hot 100 with “Waiting for a Star to Fall” in 1988 (a song originally written for Houston). By the 1990s, however, the duo was more focused on writing for others than for themselves, working on songs for OTT and Girlthing, among others. Since then, they have returned to releasing their own work as Boy Meets Girl, including the albums Wonderground (2003) and Five (2021).
“We are so pleased to have placed our songs into the capable and creative hands of the team at Primary Wave. If ever there was a perfect home for our songs at this time, without a doubt this is it. We are excited and honored to be a part of the Primary Wave family and look forward to seeing what else we might cook up together,” says Merrill and Rubicam in a statement.
“When Shannon’s and George’s songs are played – anywhere around the world – people will sing along the minute they begin,” added Justin Shukat, president of publishing at Primary Wave Music. “It’s rare for songwriters to not only see that type of response, but to write #1 hits for both themselves and for other artists. That’s what makes the two of them true songwriting legends. Their catalog of songs fit right at home at Primary Wave, the home of legends.”
Overnight sensations are largely a myth in the music business, and Brookfield Asset Management’s surprise emergence in early October as one of the biggest players in the song-catalog investment and management market was no exception.
Angelo Rufino, the managing partner behind the company’s $2 billion investment in music publisher Primary Wave, says the deal “was a real creative endeavor that took many twists and turns over six months until we both said, ‘We’ve got it. This makes complete sense.’ ”
The 41-year-old East Fishkill, N.Y., native is referring to Primary Wave founder/CEO Larry Mestel, whose business model, he says, convinced Brookfield it was time to make its first foray into the music industry. “We found, after a very long search, the manager who really spoke to how we invest as a company. Larry doesn’t buy an asset, then sit back and say, ‘Well, streaming’s growing at 18% this year. I’m going to get my beta just participating alongside that industry growth.’ He’s got a massive team of branding experts, content experts to proactively drive growth.”
Rufino predicts that strategy will be crucial to future success. “As more money comes in and as things become more competitive,” he says, “we think the ability to grow and compound these assets with a value-added component will be the single differentiator between the winners and losers.”
Rufino and Mestel worked together to craft a three-pronged structure without outside help — unusual in today’s world where investment bankers are often relied-upon go-betweens. They set up a permanent capital vehicle, which they filled partly by buying out some of the investors in Primary Wave’s first and second funds. They rolled $700 million in assets from those funds into the new structure. Brookfield threw another $1 billion on top, and Creative Artists Agency (CAA) joined as a strategic partner and minority shareholder. The result: one of the biggest single funds aimed at catalog acquisitions in the music industry.
Angelo Ruffino’s desk plaque serves as a reminder “that contrarian thinking is required, as things tend to come full circle.”
Krista Schlueter
Rufino, who holds a seat on the company’s newly formed board, sees the music intellectual-property (IP) asset class eventually becoming a $100 billion market and Primary Wave doubling or even tripling in size — while generating returns exceeding 20% — through movies, gaming partnerships and international expansion.
“It just so happens that Brookfield is the largest private investor in Brazil — a country that has an enormous music culture,” Rufino says. “We’ve also made strong footholds in India as a company, and it’s a market we are interested in exploring with Primary Wave.”
That’s not all. Brookfield’s limited partners — clients on the side of Brookfield’s business that manages money for a fee — remain extremely interested in investing in artists’ rights, especially now that some of the frenzied buying of last year has calmed, Rufino says. “We believe music [IP] as an asset class is still in the very early innings.”
Brookfield’s investment in Primary Wave is its first in the music industry. What should people unfamiliar with your firm know about Brookfield and how it invests?
We are a 100-year-old asset manager that has its roots in a Canadian holding company. We always take a contrarian view to value investing. We want to own things that we view as the backbone of the global economy. We began as a company that owned and operated assets, as opposed to just invested in them from a financial perspective. We started in real estate [and] very quickly branched out into infrastructure, renewables, corporate private equity. We’ve ticked every box of the global ecosystem of asset classes while [building on] our heritage as owner-operator with the best of both worlds — permanent capital and third party-managed money.
Where does Primary Wave fit in Brookfield’s $750 billion portfolio of assets?
Our CEO, Bruce Flatt, wants us to own the backbone of the economy. With Primary Wave, we own the backbone of the music industry with a super-long tail and very stable cash flows. When you own Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, James Brown, these are brands. He’s the best I’ve ever seen at leveraging brand extensions to supercharge the growth of these assets. When we saw the catalogs, we said, “These are the types of assets we can own forever if we so choose.”
Who brought in CAA?
That was Larry’s relationship. He introduced us to [CAA president] Jim Burston, and it became very obvious very quickly that they would supercharge Larry’s core competency. There is an absolute grab for content at this point. Netflix, Hulu and 30 others need to keep us engaged. We are going to keep seeing these artists weave their way into our lives, and CAA has the relationships to help us do that across many entertainment venues while also providing intros to artists.
The Buddha statuette “was a gift from a friend and colleague to bring our team good luck and fortune,” says Rufino.
Krista Schlueter
The market for investing in song catalogs and other intellectual property has grown crowded over the last two years. What’s your outlook for this asset class?
I’d actually argue it’s not that crowded. Somewhere around $7 billion has been raised to go after this asset class, and we think the total addressable market is well in excess of $100 billion. We think there’s going to be a massive opportunity over the next three to four years to acquire these rights. The other thing is that the opportunity set will become much more nuanced. These are really emotional, sensitive transactions for artists, and Larry has emerged as somebody whom artists trust, and that’s important when you are selling something as incredibly important as your life’s work. We wanted to buttress that by saying, “What would be better than partnering with the best steward for my assets and a financial partner that understands this asset class and has an ability to hold the asset forever?”
Why do this deal now?
I was resigned to thinking we wouldn’t get something done in the space until we met Larry earlier this year. What we knew was that 2021 didn’t feel like a good time to do this type of transaction. 2021 was a year of madness in the markets — sky-high valuations across anything you could look at. Brookfield is patient and has the capital base and buy-in from our CEO and investors to wait until opportunities are ripe and fit our organization. So we continued studying the space, gaining conviction in the asset class and understanding that the macro environment would eventually present the opportunity to acquire these assets at a good value.
Do you expect to deploy additional capital beyond what was already committed?
If the business model plays out the way we expect, yes, this entity will just keep receiving capital from us.
As you look to scale Primary Wave, what other companies might make sense to buy?
There are many things we can look at. There are going to be things that touch future mediums of how music is disseminated. Maybe it’s channels of distribution that might make sense for us. Maybe it’s song-catalog managers — people who are doing what we’re doing but need assistance with the value-added component. It could be international opportunities where we are looking at companies that could help us fully brand some of these artists in areas outside of their home country.
What kind of return does Brookfield expect to earn?
We have a 20-year history of compounding at 20%-plus in our public top company. We think returns for this asset class can be at that level and for a very long duration.
Where do you see opportunities for growth?
There are so many ways to monetize music. Think about movies, video games. Music is going to be like the Marvel and DC comic catalogs. We started with Batman and Superman. Then Justice League and Wonder Woman and Black Panther. You think about Rocket Man, Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis. Now Larry is bringing Whitney Houston to Hollywood. I look at our portfolio of musicians and say we’re going to have movies made on each of them. Prince, Whitney, Bob Marley.
The ability to scale streaming penetration globally is enormous, and the number of vectors that are going to occur with YouTube, TikTok, Peloton are not going to only drive music penetration and pricing, but growth in areas that we haven’t begun to realize.
Angelo Ruffino’s “Fugazi” bell is “a fun way to call out analysis, accounting or anything that doesn’t make sense as we review investment opportunities.”
Krista Schlueter
If there was one biopic you want Primary Wave to make, what would it be?
Prince. I’m a big Prince fan.
What other music do you like?
Classic rock. I love all things ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. I’m a massive Talking Heads fan. I’ve always been into music and sang a cappella at Skidmore College and for many years in New York, including in a group called The Invisible Men. We disbanded when we all started having kids. My two sons, who are 3 and 4, love Tom Petty. We don’t own that catalog. Larry’s going to have to buy it.
Primary Wave Music has partnered with Huey Lewis and the News to purchase ownership of all Lewis and the band members’ shares of their musical composition copyrights, including writers’ shares of income. With a $20 million price tag, according to a source close to the deal, this encompasses their full discography from the group’s self-titled debut album up to 1994’s Four Chords & Several Years Ago.
This time period, spanning about 25 years, was the band’s most fruitful run, including hits like “Hip to Be Square,” “The Power of Love,” “If This Is It,” “Workin’ for a Living” and “The Heart of Rock and Roll.” The band’s landmark third album, the 7x-platinum Sports, turns 40 next year.
With a catalog that helped define 1980s rock n’ roll, Huey Lewis and The News’ likely best-known single to date is “The Power of Love” which was written for the Back to the Future soundtrack. After peaking at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart, it earned the band nominations for a Grammy, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.
Along with the transfer of ownership of the aforementioned catalog, Primary Wave will provide Huey Lewis and The News with marketing and publishing administration. This also includes digital strategy, licensing, synch opportunities and film & TV production.
The deal follows up the announcement that Primary Wave has received $1.7 billion from the Canadian investment company Brookfield Asset Management, Inc. to fund song catalog acquisitions as well as the announcements of over $300 million worth of other deals in 2022 so far, including the purchase of music and/or estate rights from members of Def Leppard, Alice in Chains, America, The Strokes, Prince, and more.
Outside of the discography included in the catalog agreement, Huey and the band continued on into the 21st century, releasing lesser known albums like Plan B (2001) and their Stax Records tribute, Soulsville (2010). By 2018, Lewis announced that he was losing his hearing due to a battle with Ménière’s, an inner ear disease, but he brought the crew together for their 2020 comeback record, Weather.
Primary Wave Music’s David Weitzman says of the deal, “In the 1980’s, everyone heard Huey Lewis and the News’s many smashes on radio and saw their iconic & fun videos which appeared on MTV in endless rotation. Their incredibly crafted songs still made me smile, remind me of that seemingly more innocent era, and make me want to sing along at the top of your lungs. Primary Wave look forward to working with Huey to create new opportunities for his storied song catalog into the future.”
John Luneau, senior counsel for Primary Wave, added “We’re honored to welcome the music of Huey Lewis and the News to Primary Wave. Our entire team is looking forward to working with them to generate new and exciting opportunities for their iconic catalog.”