BlackRock teams with Warner to launch new $750m music-buying fund via Influence Media – Music Business Worldwide

Another week, another big-money acquisitive fund in music emerges… but this one comes with some interesting twists.

Financial giant BlackRock (not to be confused with Hipgnosis-backing Blackstone) has co-invested with Warner Music Group in a new $750 million fund to acquire stakes in music copyrights.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this fund is being launched in partnership with Influence Media Partners, the US-based company founded by Lylette Pizarro that has previously bought into rights from songwriters such as Julia Michaels and Ali Tamposi.

There is no way of saying this lightly: Across its global portfolio, BlackRock currently has over $10 trillion (with a ‘t’) of assets under management.

The WSJ reports that Influence Media has already spent $300 million of the new Warner/BlackRock fund on 20 catalogs, including one from Bad Bunny and J Balvin collaborator, Tainy.

The fund has also acquired stakes in catalogs from songwriter/producers such as the Stereotypes (Bruno Mars), as well as Jessie Reyez (Dua Lipa, Calvin Harris, Sam Smith), and Skyler Stonestreet (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber).

Pizarro tells the WSJ that Influence is investing in emerging and modern-day artists, in genres such as Latin and hip-hop.

Influence Media has reportedly never acquired a complete ownership stake in a songwriter’s catalog, indicative of the firm’s desire to partner with songwriters who maintain an aligned interest in the success of their music.

BlackRock has previously invested in another rights-acquisitive company, Primary Wave.

Primary Wave also often strikes partnership deals with artists and songwriters, but focuses the majority of its spend on evergreen “legends” of the music industry.

This isn’t the first time that Warner Music Group has partnered with an external investment house to create a rights-buying fund.

In December 2019, WMG announced a partnership with Tempo Music – a subsidiary of Providence Equity Partners – which has a spending capacity “north of a billion dollars”.

Tempo has recently acquired a portion of the song catalog of Twenty One Pilots star, Tyler Joseph, as well as a majority stake in the recording rights of two classic albums by Korn.

The former CEO of Tempo, Sherrese Clarke Soares, now runs HarbourView, a media and music-focused company with up to a billion dollars in backing from Apollo Global Management.

Last month, HarbourView announced it had acquired the publishing catalog of Latin superstar, Luis Fonsi, for an undisclosed fee.

Alongside Blackstone, BlackRock, Providence, and Apollo, another financial giant now investing heavily in music is KKR – which launched its own Chord Music fund via the $1.1 billion acquisition of a portfolio of rights from Kobalt Music Group in October.

Elsewhere, Pimco (with over $2 trillion of assets under management) is understood to have struck funding agreements with both BMG and a new player in the space, Iconoclast, which acquired a bundle of rights from The Band’s Robbie Robertson earlier this year.

The biggest single-catalog music acquisitions in recent times, though, have come from the ‘big three’ major music companies.

Earlier this month, Universal Music Group acquired Sting’s song catalog in a deal sources tell MBW was worth just north of $300 million.

Last year, Sony Music Group acquired both Bruce Springsteen’s masters and publishing catalogs for around $550 million, as well as Bob Dylan’s recorded music catalog for above $150 million.

The past three months have also seen Warner Music Group acquire the entire David Bowie song catalog (for around $250 million), as well as the Kevin Liles-led indie label, 300 Entertainment, for $400 million.Music Business Worldwide