Finance

Private-equity firm KKR is in advanced talks to acquire Simon & Schuster for about $1.65 billion, according to people familiar with the situation, capping a years-long effort by Paramount Global to sell the publisher of such authors as Stephen King and Bob Woodward. Paramount put Simon & Schuster on the sales block for a second time earlier this year after an earlier sale to Penguin Random House was blocked by a federal judge last year.

Source: WSJ News Exclusive | KKR in Advanced Talks to Buy Simon & Schuster for Roughly $1.65 Billion

The growth of PE in the music tech space may have as much to do with the growth of PE itself as with the growth of music creation tech. Private equity has boomed in the past decade, with the number of funds exploding to around 18,000 as of 2021, a 60% jump in five years.  According to McKinsey, PE now has $11.7 trillion in assets under management, and that number has grown by around 20% per year since 2017.

Source: Private equity loves music tech: Meet the music creation platforms backed by deep-pocketed funds

Stockholm-based song investment platform MasterExchange has announced a $2.74 million funding round to help expand its service.  MasterExchange allows anyone to invest fiat currency in specific songs to receive a quarterly share of the music royalty payments. The platform also serves as an exchange to allow anyone to trade their shares of music royalties with other investors.

Source: Song Investment Platform MasterExchange Raises $2.74 Million

Luxembourg-headquartered ANote Music, which bills itself as “Europe’s leading marketplace for investing in music royalties,” announced a funding milestone and an institutional-investor expansion. On the former front, “additional funding” has enabled the five-year-old blockchain business (which officially launched its platform in late July of 2020) to crack the initially mentioned €3.3 million ($3.64 million at the present exchange rate) in secured funding.

Source: ANote Music Announces €3.3M Funding, Institutional Expansion

Broadcast Music Inc (BMI), the music rights company representing top songwriters such as Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Rihanna, is once again exploring options including a sale after it ditched its non-profit model, people familiar with the matter said. BMI has turned to Goldman Sachs Group the investment bank that also advised it on deal discussions last year, for guidance as it fields interest from potential acquirers.

Source: Exclusive: Music rights giant BMI in renewed talks to sell itself -sources

If you want to know what investors think about the Hollywood strikes and the media sector right now, take a look at stock prices. The media business is hurting and the strikes, mandated by actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and writers’ union WGA, are making things worse. Despite criticisms from Hollywood leaders about poor timing of the strikes, some Wall Street analysts see the wisdom of a fast settlement.

Source: ‘Idiots’: Wall Street Analysts Unload on Hollywood

There are three main companies working on tokenizing traditional music royalty streams — Blau’s Royal, Anotherblock and Bolero — and they all follow the same basic premise. A song’s rights holders divest a certain percentage of their royalties, and those royalty rights are fractionalized as NFTs. Tokenholders receive regular payouts to their crypto wallets in USDC in proportion to their share of the rights.

Source: Tokenizing music royalties as NFTs could help the next Taylor Swift

The news out of most of the media giants has been grim in recent months: Layoffs, budget cuts and retrenchment in many cases. The expectation is that the second-quarter earnings reports that will roll out later this month will be weak. Heidi Chung, who pens VIP+’s weekly Media and Money newsletter, says there’s hope on the horizon that the advertising market will improve over the first half, particularly in the digital sector.

Source: Media Stocks to Hit More Turbulence with Wobbly Q2 Earnings and Weak Second Half Outlook

Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF), the UK-listed entity that owns stakes in over 65,000 songs, saw double-digit growth in its latest fiscal year – in what the firm calls its strongest FY performance since its IPO five years ago. HSF today (July 13) published its financial figures for FY 2023 (to end of March 2023), revealing that its like-for-like net revenues grew 10.9% YoY in the period.

Source: Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s like-for-like net revenues rose 10.9% in FY 2023, streaming revenues up 14.8% last year

The hope for HSF’s management and shareholders in recent months was that the continued strong growth in music’s paid streaming revenues would combine with a downward trend in interest rates to boost HSF’s share price. Now, some of HSF’s biggest shareholders are hatching a plan to pump up the company’s public valuation via tactical methods, including a potential disposal of some assets in the marketplace.

Source: Hipgnosis Songs Fund may soon sell some copyrights. Why – and who might be the buyer?