Music Ally Focus #38: Private equity funds are paying top dollar for music catalogue. Will publishers be drawn into a bidding war & will new artists suffer? Music-tech strategist Dan Fowler explains.

Private equity funds and firms like Hipgnosis are scooping up music catalogues. And 60% of Hipgnosis’s expensively-purchased catalogue of music is over ten years old, with only 2.5% under 3 years old. Will major publishers and labels be drawn into a bidding war over copyrights, and will new artists suffer as a result? 

Music-tech strategist Dan Fowler recently wrote a fascinating article called “The Changing Landscape of Music Publishing” which aimed to figure out what the impact of the big catalogue purchases of Hipgnosis and private equity funds like  Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo would be on major publishers. In this podcast he explains how:

• Hipgnosis may not be overpaying for rights, and are in fact establishing a new market value, 
• what it means when staggeringly wealthy firms that are focused on pure financial profit get involved in the music rights industry,
• what the possibly-worrying impact will be on new music and musicians,
• how it's only going to get harder for new musicians to make a living from streaming and royalties.

Dan Fowler on Twitter: twitter.com/dan_djfnd

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