Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we make sure that you caught the 5 largest tales to hit our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their earnings and scale back their touring prices.
Anybody who thinks music rights funding might have plateaued ought to try the information this week about Pophouse Leisure, the Sweden-based music funding agency co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, which introduced it had raised over €1.2 billion (USD $1.3bn) for catalog and IP acquisitions.
The corporate’s inaugural fundraising included a fund of over €1 billion, with a further €200 million raised by way of devoted co-investment autos.
In the meantime, Common Music Group‘s annual report revealed that it had spent EUR €266 million ($288m) on catalog offers in 2024, up significantly from the EUR€178 million ($193m) it had spent the 12 months earlier than.
Elsewhere, Bertelsmann reported BMG‘s 2024 earnings this week, revealing the music firm surpassed $1 billion in annual revenues for the primary time, whereas EBITDA soared 37% YoY.
In copyright-related information, rightsholders bought one thing of a shock with the discharge of a report from a suppose tank run by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Put merely, the report proposed tearing up the UK’s copyright protections to offer the nation’s AI builders a leg up.
Lastly, MBW reported completely on the outcomes of on-line safety agency Net Sheriff‘s investigation right into a “decades-long marketing campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation” focusing on Morrissey. The revelations got here amid authorized motion by Morrissey to place an finish to the harassment.
Pophouse Leisure, the Sweden-based music funding agency co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, has raised over EUR €1.2 billion (USD $1.3 billion) for its debut fund.
The Stockholm-based firm introduced on March 31 that Pophouse Fund I raised over €1 billion ($1.1 billion), reaching its laborious cap and making it, Pophouse claimed, “one of many largest first-time personal fairness funds to be raised in Europe within the final decade”.
Pophouse mentioned it secured a further €200 million ($216m) by means of devoted co-investment autos, “offering buyers the chance to take a position alongside the Fund and take part in choose transactions”.
The Fund will likely be used to amass music catalogs and IP…
Common Music Group’s 2024 annual report proudly trumpets a strong business 12 months — a interval wherein UMG amassed USD $12.88 billion in complete revenues, with annual adjusted EBITDA hovering to USD $2.88 billion.
Past the headline numbers, the tome comprises loads of nuggets of trade intelligence that warrant nearer inspection.
As an example, in 2024, catalog gross sales (outlined as music older than three years) accounted for 66% of UMG’s recorded music digital and bodily income (aka: cash from report gross sales and streaming). Frontline releases (music lower than three years outdated) accounted for 34%.
This represented a shift from 2023, when catalog gross sales accounted for 62% of UMG’s recorded music income…
An institute run by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has revealed a report that comprises an inventory of solutions that might essentially affect how music copyright is handled within the UK, within the AI age.
The report, titled Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a World Chief within the Arts and AI, presents what it calls a “progressive answer” that seems to prioritize AI development over established creator rights.
The report’s authors don’t mince phrases about their bias towards huge tech and AI builders, boldly stating that “the progressive answer isn’t about clinging to copyright legal guidelines designed for an earlier period however permitting them to co-evolve with technological change.”
The report’s suggestions seem to constantly favor AI builders’ pursuits, with the report explicitly stating that “there are higher methods of supporting the inventive industries within the digital age than by means of restrictive copyright legal guidelines for AI-model coaching…”
BMG generated EUR €963 million (USD $1.04bn) in annual revenues in 2024, up 6.4% YoY or up 8.1% YoY on an natural foundation.
That’s based on a brand new set of annual fiscal outcomes from the music firm’s mother or father, Bertelsmann, revealed on March 31.
BMG’s adjusted working EBITDA reached an all-time excessive of EUR €265 million ($287m), up 37% YoY in comparison with the prior 12 months’s equal results of €194 million ($210m).
Bertelsmann attributed final 12 months’s robust revenue progress at BMG to “optimistic results from digital direct gross sales, the strategic deal with core companies and important investments…”
Net Sheriff, a world on-line safety agency whose previous purchasers embrace Prince, Bob Dylan, and Beyoncé, has accomplished a wide-reaching investigation into what it describes as a “decades-long marketing campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation” – focusing on Morrissey.
In a press release despatched to MBW, Net Sheriff says that it has recognized a “particular person of curiosity” behind the alleged on-line harassment marketing campaign, and expects to establish extra perpetrators “imminently, in each Britain and Europe, in addition to the US”.
The corporate claims to have uncovered proof of a “subtle try and affiliate the artist with false narratives designed to defame him and deform his [character]”.
Provides Net Sheriff: “The aim of the fraud seems to be aimed toward supporting the perpetrators of racist and far-right ideology by falsely associating an influential artist with their diatribe…”
MBW’s Weekly Spherical-Up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximise their earnings and scale back their touring prices.Music Enterprise Worldwide
