It felt like the tip of the story. Blackstone formally acquired Hipgnosis Songs Fund from its public shareholders final month for USD $1.584 billion – giving the Merck Mercuriadis-founded firm an enterprise valuation of $2.2 billion-plus.
The post-acquisition plan was apparent: Blackstone would mix HSF’s 40,000 songs with Blackstone’s privately held Hipgnosis Songs Capital, aka Hipgnosis Songs Belongings, residence to copyrights related to Leonard Cohen, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Nelly Furtado, and Kenny Chesney.
That Blackstone enterprise mixture, MBW understands, took mere days to occur following the HSF acquisition.
What was maybe much less clear within the wake of the Blackstone/HSF deal was what would occur to Hipgnosis Track Administration (HSM) – the funding adviser to each Hipgnosis’ personal fund and the (beforehand) public entity of Hipgnosis Songs Fund.
Chatter round HSM gathered quantity when it was introduced on July 2 that Mercuriadis would exit his position as Chairman of the corporate six years after founding it.
Regardless of abandoning an skilled management group together with Ben Katovsky (CEO), Dan Pounder (CFO), Jon Baker, and Sara Lord, Mercuriadis’ exit led some to imagine that Blackstone would possibly slim down HSM, because the monetary large seemed to take a quieter position in music enterprise rights possession.
That assumption is now trying questionable – as a result of Hipgnosis Track Administration is on a hiring spree post-Blackstone’s HSF deal.
HSM is presently recruiting for quite a few London-based roles together with Product Supervisor of Artistic/Viewers Improvement, plus VP of Licensing Administration, a Junior Knowledge Engineer, and a Staff Coordinator.
This doesn’t look like the motion of an organization seeking to reduce its group.
One other growth is going down at Hipgnosis, too, which additionally speaks to the corporate’s potential future affect within the world music house.
Whispers are breaking out amongst MBW’s sources within the US that Hipgnosis representatives have undertaken exploratory discussions with massive music publishers concerning a possible publishing admin settlement.
Up to now, Hipgnosis has relied on its in-house administration group at Hipgnosis Songs Group (HSG) (beforehand generally known as Huge Deal Music) to handle the publishing admin of its track portfolio in the USA.
Nonetheless, through the bidding course of for HSF, Blackstone confirmed that, following a profitable acquisition, it’d promote or restructure Hipgnosis Songs Group.
May a publishing admin deal with a significant music firm now be on the horizon for Hipgnosis?
If that’s the case, it might be important to the trade’s largest gamers.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund generated $147.2 million in revenues within the 12 months to finish of March 2023 – and that didn’t embrace Blackstone’s privately-held catalog of songs (together with Leonard Cohen, Justin Bieber and so on.).Music Enterprise Worldwide
