welcome to The music industry around the worldWeekly Recap – where we make sure you’ve caught the five biggest stories that have made headlines in the past seven days. The MBW Roundup is supported by Centtripwhich helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and lower their touring costs.
The catalog acquisitions market began to heat up again this week with news that financial giant Brookfield Asset Management has reached a $2 billion deal with primary wave Music to invest in music rights.
As part of the deal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Brookfield will acquire a significant minority stake in Primary Wave. Brookfield will also commit $1.7 billion to a fund to purchase music rights.
As far as financial giants go, Brookfield is a colossus, with over $750 billion in assets under management. The company’s deal with Primary Wave marks its first step into the music business.
Also this week, MBW reported that Universal Music GroupEurope’s 10-year ban on buying back any assets – or re-signing any artists – involved in its EMI-related divestments has expired.
On September 21, 2012, the European Commission officially announced that it had cleared the acquisition of EMI Music by UMG, but with strict conditions.
In addition to forced divestitures, EC declaredin unequivocal terms: “Universal [has] has pledged not to repurchase assets or re-sign artists signed with the relevant entities for a period of ten years.
This ten-year ban, the EC said at the time, would ensure that Universal’s EMI-related divestments would be “genuinely sustainable”. On September 21, 2022, this 10-year period expired.
Elsewhere, MBW reported that around 100,000 new tracks are now uploaded to music streaming platforms every day. Additionally, TikTok’s parent company is recruiting for A&R manager positions in four major North American cities, while Triller secured a $310 million investment ahead of its expected Q4 IPO.
Primary Wave was already a strong player in the music business. He just got a lot more powerful.
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Brookfield Asset Management has entered into a $2 billion deal with Primary Wave Music to invest in music rights.
As part of the deal, Brookfield will acquire what the WSJ reports as a significant minority stake in Primary Wave.
Brookfield will also commit $1.7 billion to a fund to buy music rights – a huge amount of money for Primary Wave to manage.
Primary Wave chief executive Larry Mestel told the Journal: “[This deal] means that there is no good acquisition that we could not make in the music industry. We are not limited by size or opportunities…”
It was inevitable, but it’s no less breathtaking: around 100,000 new songs are now uploaded to music streaming platforms every day.
So say two of the most influential people in the modern music industry: CEO and Chairman of Universal Music Group, Sir Lucian Graingeas well as the outgoing CEO of Warner Music Group, Steve Cooper.
Speaking at the Music Matters conference in Singapore on September 27, Grainge said 100,000 tracks were now “added to music platforms every day”.
Steve Cooper, speaking at the Goldman Sachs The Sept. 12 Communicopia event said, “Today, every weekday, approximately 100,000 music tracks are uploaded to SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple, [and] soon.
“The complexity of being able to separate his music from the other 99,999 tracks uploaded that day is incredibly complex. [and] incredibly difficult…”
Over the past decade, Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music rights company, has been legally barred from buying some assets – and signing some superstars – in Europe and the UK.
This is a direct result of the restrictions imposed on UMG by the European Commission (EC) in 2012, when the company run by Sir Lucian Grainge acquired the world’s fourth largest record label, EMI Music, for around 1.9 billion. dollars from Citibank…
MBW asked earlier this summer if TikTok – through parent company Bytedance – was slowly transforming into a record label.
If you’re still not convinced, allow us to let you in on something MBW just spotted online.
TikTok’s parent company is currently recruiting for new A&R manager positions in four major North American cities: Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Toronto.
The job description for this role seems… very labeled to us…
Much of the global economy is in disarray, and major entertainment industries are going through tough times: witness the U.S. movie box office, where monthly revenues in September are set to fall to their lowest level in 25 years ( outside of the pandemic).
In the music industry, however, the big bucks keep moving.
Last week, Concorde confirmed that he was buying a catalog of Phil Collins and his fellow Genesis members for over $300 million.
Meanwhile, Triller – TikTok’s often controversial rival – has confirmed that it has secured a $310 million binding investment from GEM (Global Emerging Markets), a Luxembourg-based alternative investment group…
