Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone Group’s chief executive made a record US$1 Billion for a second year straight according to the Financial Times. The billionaire received record income of nearly $1.3bn in 2022, as the company’s assets under management and profits rose at the world’s largest private equity firm FT stated.
Blackstone pumped a billion dollars into the U.K.’s Hipgnosis Songs Fund and Schwarzman personally made more than a billion dollars last year as he packaged the future earnings of songs against hundreds of millions of debt. The company earns money every time Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” is played at a football match and hundreds of other hit songs now seen as assets.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund, the London Stock Exchange company leading the charge to buy music catalogues at the dawn of the pandemic has the Church Of England CCLA as an investor. Hipgnosis has the rights to 23 out of the top 100 most streamed songs in the Spotify’s ‘billions club’ including a 20% share in Rockabye by Clean Bandit featuring reggae singer Sean Paul and Ann Marie. Also in their catalogue are the rights to hardcore songs from 50 Cent, Interscope founder Jimmy Iovine (who funded the careers of Tupac, Dr. Dre, Death Row Records, and No Doubt and others), Nelly, Pusha T, WuTang Clan front man RZA, and Rick James and more.
Stephen Schwarzman’s bottom line is way ahead of Universal Music Chairman/CEO Sir Lucian Grainge who leads the pack of highest earning music executives as ranked by Billboard Magazine. The music man hailed as the most powerful person in music racked up a total compensation package of $320 million dollars last year.
Other top earners included Kang Hyo-won, Senior producer at Korean company HYBE as well s HYBE’s Co-CEOs Yoon Seok-jun and Kim Shin-gyu, who earned $34 million and $24 million respectively.
All over America and Europe, legendary musicians and rights holders like Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, and Stevie Nicks have sold or are in the process of selling their life’s work for eye-popping sums of money to Private Equity groups. The James Brown Estate reportedly walked away with $90 million from Primary Wave after a fifteen year contentious internal battle. Primary Wave Music is a New York company that specializes in marketing estates and song catalogs. They also own Whitney Houston’s catalogue and bought the assets of the Brown estate, including music rights, real estate and the control over Brown’s name and likeness.
In Hip Hop younger musicians and rappers like Lil Wayne cashed out his entire Young Money catalogue including Drake and Nicki Minaj for $100 million to Universal Music Group.
Future recently sold his publishing in a deal said to be worth $65 million to Influence Media Partners. The sale includes 612 titles from 2004 to 2020.
Universal Music Group also dropped a cool $300 Million in the same period to purchase the entire songwriting catalog of Bob Dillon in one of the biggest acquisitions ever of a single act’s publishing rights, per New York Times.
BBC reported that Tina Turner sold the rights to her music catalogue for $50 million dollars, including hits like The Best and Nutbush City Limits, to music publishing company BMG. Billboard Magazine reported in January that Columbian Superstar Shakira had sold 100% of her music publishing rights to the Merck Mercuriadis owned Hipgnosis Songs Fund.
Merck Mercuriadis, the front man for Hipgnosis recently did a share buy back but he told World Music Views that he would buy reggae music catalogues. Sherrese Clarke Soares, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants and chief of HarbourView Equity Partners says, music is a sure bet to invest. She joined with Apollo Global Management to invest $1bn in music acquisition.
“It’s safe retirement dollars to really put to work,” she told the Financial Times in January this year.
Soares, named a Wallstreet Journal Woman To Watch has already snatched up 35 catalogues including $100 million to acquire Despacito artist Luis Fonsi’s mostly spanish sing alongs and $40 million to acquire Usher’s share of Justin Beibers catalogue. HarbourView also own songs from rapper Tech N9ne, George Jones and Trey Songz.
With no reggae announcements yet she says, “I want to be the platform that sees the value in all these genres that live outside of legacy rock.”
“We can give a really good return for that type of risk. It’s safe retirement dollars to really put to work,” said Soares to the Financial Times as she goes on the hunt for music and media with a billion dollar check book.
