Sony Music Publishing will take ownership of Hipgnosis Songs Group, Variety has confirmed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The deal includes songs from Sabrina Carpenter, Blake Mills, My Morning Jacket, Alex Warren, St. Vincent, Kali Uchis and more, with Sony Music Publishing taking over Hipgnosis Songs’ publishing and third-party administration businesses. This news was first reported by Billboard.
The acquisition comes on the heels of Hipgnosis rebranding to Recognition Music Group in March, which folded the Hipgnosis Songs Fund and Hipgnosis Songs Assets into the new group.
In 2024, Hipgnosis struck two enormous deals: the sale of the Hipgnosis Songs Fund to financial behemoth Blackstone for $1.6 billion, after which founder Merck Mercuriadis exited and Blackstone took the then-publicly traded company private. The second was Hipgnosis’ issuance of $1.47 billion in bonds backed by royalties of music from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi, 50 Cent and more.
Last year “marked a pivotal transition for the company with the Hipgnosis entities coming under common ownership and the completion of a landmark $1.47 billion financing – demonstrating strong investor conviction in the asset class,” Qasim Abbas, head of tactical opportunities international for Blackstone, said at the time.
As Variety reported last year, Hipgnosis helped drive up the price of music catalogs through its purchases, paying top dollar to a large number of top producers and songwriters for their work. The market then followed suit, driving up the value of catalogs enormously — Hipgnosis paid a reported $100 million for half of Neil Young’s songs catalog. In separate deals Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen reportedly were paid as much as four to six times that — but Hipgnosis grew overextended as investors questioned the company’s ability to exploit the catalogs it had acquired.
Sony Music Publishing is the largest such company in the world, with 6.63 million songs in its catalog as of March 31, according to the most recent available data.
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+ HarbourView, the content-focused investment firm founded in 2021, has announced $500 million in debt financing via the financial conglomerate KKR. Last year, the two companies struck a similar deal, also for $500 million.
“This additional capital from KKR will help us accelerate our strategy to align with where the media, sports and entertainment markets are headed,” HarbourView Founder and CEO Sherrese Clarke said in a statement.
Last year, it was announced HarbourView would be financing a Queen Latifah biopic. Earlier this year, it purchased the rights to T-Pain’s catalog, along with certain assets from Grammy-winning producer Rodney Jerkins. The company’s catalog includes music from Brad Paisley, Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo and Cardi B and hits like Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” the latter as part of a $50 million deal.
“In the industrialized revolution, we’re going from horse and buggy into motorized cars,” Clarke told Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast last year.
+ Cooking Vinyl, home to Billy Bragg, Roger Waters, the Jesus and Mary Chain and many more iconic artists from the UK and beyond, is being acquired by the U.S.-based Exceleration Music, the companies have announced.
Exceleration has struck deals with numerous companies including its acquisition of Redeye in 2023, the acquisition of Kill Rock Stars and a “financial alliance” with Mom+Pop Music in 2022 and acquiring Bloodshot Records in 2021, among others. One of the company’s earliest deals was with Chicago-based blues stalwart Alligator Records in 2021.
Exceleration was founded in 2021 by former Concord Music Group CEO Glenn Barros along with Amy Dietz, John Burk, Charles Caldas and Dave Hansen with “substantial investment capital,” according to Music Business Worldwide.
“It’s great to see the music industry being embraced by the investment world. Not so long ago, most investors thought this industry was finished,” Barros said at the time. “But this influx of capital has in many ways turned music into a commodity to be traded like any other financial asset.”
From Variety US