Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we be certain you caught the 5 greatest 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 cut back their touring prices.
Anybody who thinks music rights funding might have plateaued ought to take a look at 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 through devoted co-investment automobiles.
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 obtained one thing of a shock with the discharge of a report from a assume 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 solely on the outcomes of on-line safety agency Internet Sheriff‘s investigation right into a “decades-long marketing campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation” concentrating 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 arduous cap and making it, Pophouse claimed, “one of many largest first-time non-public fairness funds to be raised in Europe within the final decade”.
Pophouse mentioned it secured a further €200 million ($216m) by way of devoted co-investment automobiles, “offering buyers the chance to take a position alongside the Fund and take part in choose transactions”.
The Fund might be used to accumulate music catalogs and IP…
Common Music Group’s 2024 annual report proudly trumpets a stable industrial 12 months — a interval through which UMG amassed USD $12.88 billion in whole revenues, with annual adjusted EBITDA hovering to USD $2.88 billion.
Past the headline numbers, the tome comprises loads of nuggets of business 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 previous) 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 options that might basically affect how music copyright is handled within the UK, within the AI age.
The report, titled Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a International Chief within the Arts and AI, presents what it calls a “progressive resolution” 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 resolution is just not 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 artistic industries within the digital age than by way 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 guardian, 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 “constructive results from digital direct gross sales, the strategic concentrate on core companies and important investments…”
Internet Sheriff, a world on-line safety agency whose previous shoppers 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” – concentrating on Morrissey.
In an announcement despatched to MBW, Internet Sheriff says that it has recognized a “particular person of curiosity” behind the alleged on-line harassment marketing campaign, and expects to determine extra perpetrators “imminently, in each Britain and Europe, in addition to america”.
The corporate claims to have uncovered proof of a “subtle try to affiliate the artist with false narratives designed to defame him and warp his [character]”.
Provides Internet 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 cut back their touring prices.Music Enterprise Worldwide
