plans to invest $1 billion in shopping for music rights and managing catalogs, a switch the asset supervisor said will revenue from the rapid growth of online streaming.
The funding will come as part of a partnership with an advisory company affiliated with
, a music-investment agency that trades on the London Stock Change. Hipgnosis, led by former pop-star supervisor Merck Mercuriadis, buys artists’ monitor catalogs and earns earnings when the music is streamed on-line or utilized in movies or selling.
By partnering with the Hipgnosis advisory company, Blackstone hopes to cash in on new methods during which followers are taking in music via the internet. “The music enterprise has been on the forefront of the fast-growing streaming monetary system and is unlocking new strategies of consuming content material materials,” Blackstone govt Qasim Abbas said.
Bloomberg reported remaining week that Blackstone and the advisory company had been in talks.
The Hipgnosis fund could have the becoming to co-invest inside the new Blackstone partnership’s catalog acquisitions, the companies said. Blackstone will take an possession stake in Mr. Mercuriadis’s advisory company and might make investments to reinforce the company’s information and know-how capabilities to help the partnership deal with music rights further successfully.
Hipgnosis has said that its function is to find out songs as an funding asset class. Mr. Mercuriadis, its founder, beforehand managed singers akin to Beyoncé and Elton John and bands along with Weapons N’ Roses and Iron Maiden.
Hipgnosis went public in 2018. As of June, it owned the rights to higher than 64,000 songs, along with virtually 14,000 top-ten hits. Neil Youthful, Journey, Fleetwood Mac and Mariah Carey are among the many many artists whose songs Hipgnosis has invested in.
The Covid-19 pandemic has boosted people’s use of streaming to take heed to conventional songs, Mr. Mercuriadis said in June.
Totally different huge asset managers have lined up comparable bets on music rights, every through investments in several companies and by shopping for rights instantly.
By the use of its credit score rating arm,
remaining week devoted to once more HarbourView Equity Companions, a model new company that plans to construct up monitor rights, with a $1 billion funding. The deal includes a combination of debt and equity that shall be used to purchase belongings, an Apollo spokeswoman said.
KKR & Co. Inc. earlier this yr took a majority stake in a pop-song catalog from producer Ryan Tedder. It has moreover launched a partnership with BMG, a doc label and music author, that will see KKR commit about $1 billion to music-rights investments.
Hedge-fund supervisor
William Ackman
bought a ten% curiosity in
this summer season season ahead of its spinoff as a public company from
He had beforehand tried to place cash into Frequent through a special-purpose acquisition agency he managed, nevertheless the deal fell through amid regulatory scrutiny.
Write to Matt Grossman at matt.grossman@wsj.com
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