According to the announcement from UK-headquartered Cutting Edge today (April 15), the new funds will be used for a combination of “corporate purposes” and the acquisition of music rights across the film, TV, theatre, gaming, and wellness spaces. Cutting Edge said it has already identified a “circa USD $1.5 billion pipeline” of potential investments.
Source: Cutting Edge Group secures $500m to fund music rights acquisitions
The UK Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) committee issued a report on Wednesday (April 10) calling for a number of new policies, aimed at ensuring better compensation for people working in creative industries. One recommendation sure to get the attention of the music industry is a change to the split in streaming royalties between recorded music and music publishing.
Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Kiss have sold their music catalog, name, image and likeness — including their iconic makeup designs — to Pophouse Entertainment, the Sweden-based music investment firm behind ABBA’s “Voyage” hologram show. While terms of the deal were not officially announced, Bloomberg and Associated Press said it was worth upwards of $300 million.
Source: Kiss Sells Catalog, Name, Likeness and More to Pophouse Entertainment for $300 Million
Changes to the way Spotify calculates recorded royalties went live on the platform as of Monday. Spotify says it won’t share the number of unique listeners required to become eligible for royalties “to prevent further manipulation by bad actors”. Spotify said in a blog post that “99.5% of all streams” on its platform “are of tracks that have at least 1,000 annual streams”, and that “each of those tracks will earn more under this policy”.
Tech giants aren’t doing much acquiring these days, due mostly to an unfavorable regulatory environment. But they’re finding other ways to spend billions of dollars on the next big thing. Amazon’s $2.75 billion investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, announced this week, was its largest venture deal and the latest example of the AI gold rush that’s prompting the biggest tech companies to fling open their wallets.
Source: Generative AI ‘FOMO’ is driving tech heavyweights to invest billions of dollars in startups
Shot Tower Capital has engaged in an independent audit of Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s assets, lowering the valuation of its assets by 26%. This follows a report on March 18 that revealed a double-counting error in Hipgnosis’ accrued revenue, with the board announcing a 7.6% reduction to its operative net asset value (NAV). The report also finds that Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s acquisition underwriting was “below music industry standards.”
Source: Hipgnosis Songs Fund Audit Says Fund ‘Failed to Perform’
SoundExchange, the entity tasked with collecting and distributing royalties for the use of recordings on non-interactive digital services, just recently unveiled this latest milestone via a brief release. SoundExchange towards the beginning of 2024 indicated that it had distributed over $1 billion during 2023, up from about $959 million in 2022. Bearing in mind this growth the $12 billion milestone will presumably arrive within the next year or so.
Source: SoundExchange Announces $11 Billion Distribution Milestone
Amazon said Wednesday it is pouring an additional $2.75 billion into Anthropic, bringing its total investment in the artificial intelligence startup to $4 billion. Amazon will maintain a minority stake in San Francisco-based Anthropic, a rival of ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The Seattle-based tech giant made an initial investment of $1.25 billion in Anthropic in September and indicated then it had plans to invest up to $4 billion.
Source: Amazon pours an additional $2.75 billion into AI startup Anthropic
Less than five months after unveiling an over $700 million catalog partnership with Morgan Stanley, Kobalt says it’s increased its total “funding capacity” to north of $1 billion. New York-based Kobalt touted the deployable capital today, via a formal release. The more than $1 billion at hand refers specifically to the mentioned Morgan Stanley-powered tranche as well as a refinancing and a newly obtained $266.5 million from an asset-backed securitization.
Source: Kobalt Funding Tops $1B Following Refinancing, Royalty Securities
WavMaker, a new music licensing platform dedicated to video creators, has launched with $5 million in seed funding led by Vicky Patel, a principal at Nashville record label Wavy Records and co-founder of Monarch Media. The startup says it seeks to help video creators streamline the process of finding high-quality music for video projects by offering a curated library of songs cleared for commercial use.
Source: Music licensing platform WavMaker launches with $5m seed funding