Composium Digest: The Wolves of Wall Street are buying out music catalogs
Composium | January 26, 2021
Composium Digest is a newsletter-only addition, delivered once a week. Get overviews of interesting stories happening in the music industry, stay informed of various opportunities music startups and companies offer, and catch up on some of the Composium articles you might have missed.
In case you missed it…
Composium’s first event of 2021 is happening on January 30, 10am Pacific Time with Chase Bethea! A freelance composer that has shipped 19 titles in his ten years of experience, he will be sharing his story and advice on how to start as a video game composer. Register here: https://mycomposium.com/events
The Wolves of Wall Street are buying out music catalogs
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium Founder & CEO
On January 11, KKR announced its investment into Ryan Tedder’s and OneRepublic’s music catalogs on January 11. One of the leading global investment firms, KKR will now have nearly 500 songs that the artist wrote for OneRepublic and other musicians, and control over publishing and recorded music rights. This isn’t the first time the firm invests in “artist-centric businesses”, and certainly not the last.
Another major player has been Hipgnosis, founded by Merck Mercuriadis, which has recently acquired publishing rights of Shakira’s 145-song music catalog. That isn’t all - the company announced purchases that include catalogs of stars like Neil Young, Jimmy Iovine, and Lindsey Buckingham, and is testing the waters and “eyeing” catalogs with a combined purchase price of over £1 billion.
While we’ve seen investment tycoons purchasing music catalogs before (Taylor Swift’s master rights to her six albums were bought by Shamrock Capital and Universal Music Group got Bob Dylan’s song catalog for an estimate of $400 million), this year offers promising opportunities for investment firms, especially with concerts being cancelled and the prices on music catalogs dropping: in its Annual Report 2020, Hipgnosis states that “Until recently, 15 years of declining revenue has resulted in attractively priced copyrights and writers who are willing to sell to the right buyer.”
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Forced Online, an Opera Festival Searches for Intimacy
David Caldarella, Composium Ambassador
Prototype, a festival of new opera and music theatre, was pushed almost entirely online this year— a precautionary necessity that has been the downfall of many online performances, which lack the inherent intimacy and quality of in-person performances.
Against these odds, Prototype's "Modulation", premiered January 8th, delivered twelve distinct and unique works, including live-recorded opera, animated shorts, and live films. Notable works include Valgeir Sigurdsson's "Wide Slumber," Septina Rosalina Layan and Garin Nugroho's "The Planet: A Lament," and Ben Frost's "The Murder of Halit Yozgat."
Clubhouse’s funding continues to skyrocket
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium Founder & CEO
In his newsletter, Nathan Baschez calls Clubhouse a mixture of “a podcast and a party.” The platform itself doesn’t provide much of an explanation as to what it is, other than that it is “a new type of social network based on voice.”
Launched in March 2020, the mobile app is invite-only and audio-based, where you can chat with anyone using your voice in real time, or simply chime in to listen to others talk.
Although Clubhouse was founded somewhat recently, its amount in Series B round is estimated to be about $100 million and had been in talks on a valuation of $1 billion before the round.
The lead investor is Andreessen Horowitz, stating that “we believe Clubhouse will be a meaningful addition to the world, one that increases empathy and provides new ways for people to talk to each other.”
Musescore 3.6 Release Brings Engraving Enhancements
David Caldarella, Composium Ambassador
Musescore's final major update in it's Musescore 3 series brings a massive overhaul to the engraving style of the software, adding automatic instrument grouping, staff sizes, and bracketing; a brand new notation font Leland, built from the ground up by designers Martin Keary and Simon Smith; a new type font Edwin, which matches the standards of popular publishers like Boosey & Hawkes; and various other fixes to give scores a more professional edge. Martin Keary explores the process of designing Leland below:
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