Why Aren’t Private Equity Firms Rushing To Buy Reggae & Dancehall Artist’s Image Rights & Catalogues?

There are dozens of dancehall and reggae artists with extensive catalogues but there has not been any announced acts from the genre who are selling their music masters or publishing in return for multiples. All over America and Europe, legendary musicians and rights holders like Neil Diamond, Neil Young, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, and Justin Timberlake have sold or are in the process of selling their life’s work for eye-popping sums of money: 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, 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. 

Hipgnosis Songs Fund has raised £1.052 billion to fund acquisitions since it was established in 2018 and within their current portfolio are other top acts and producers like 50 cent, Timbaland, Rick James, RZA, LA Ried, Pusha T, Neil Young, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

As media and private equity companies stick their bets on the music industry, music is being assessed as a valuable asset class and as streaming becomes more integrated worldwide, song catalogues have become a viable investment for Wall Street. In Jamaica reggae music has been the traditional leading value brand, but over the last three years dancehall has been the backbone of the music streaming revolution, taking up the majority of all listening each week.

It is easier to get Mercuriadis on instagram than it is to get him on zoom for a full on interview so we enquired via DM whether or not he and his company have an interest in reggae music catalogues and he responded, “We do buy reggae music. Who are the writers / artists?”

I will attempt to answer Merck’s question “who are the artists?”

For starters American bands like Stick Figure, Rebelution and Iration are creating new audiences but there are yet to have major hits that resonate outside of their core audience. Naturally one would figure the Marley catalogue, which as far as reggae music goes, is the most valuable to be associated with.

Chris Blackwell, the man who launched Marley to the world controls Marley’s music and in his death acquired and sold a percentage of his share of the Bob Marley’s catalogue to the same company that snatched James Brown’s estate, for $50 million back in 2018.

Blackwell, now 85, may have done the deal as a pat on his shoulders to exchange his reggae gold for cash, as he enjoys the uplands of his sunset years. Under the Primary Wave deal, the company now controls 80 percent of the Island Records founder’s share of two catalogs: Marley’s songs and Blue Mountain Music. Blue Mountain Music was founded in 1962 by Chris Blackwell and it administer’s Chronixx’ Catalogue as well as reggae hits by Toots & the Maytals and rock classics by Free (“All Right Now”) and Marianne Faithfull. Blackwell told the New York Times that Blue Mountain also has rights to U2 songs, but those were not part of the deal.

The Marley Family

Two members of the Marley Family told World Music Views that under no circumstances would they sell their family’s share of Bob Marley’s catalogue.

Rohan Marley was a guest on the I am Athlete podcast; on the episode Rohan revealed gory details of his personal life and the early struggles the Marley family had to endure to secure a successful legacy for their father.

“Its not as easy as you think, when we were children, when my father passed away he didn’t have a will, so the government in Jamaica wanted to sell all his rights, so it was my sister Cedella and Mama Rita and she was the one to fight for it…we had no money, everything was frozen, my dad wasn’t making any money..All we had was our father’s rights, his likeness and his music and we did not sell that,” he reasoned.

“At no time we will sell that..people offered us 20 million dollars.” As he dismissed the thought passionately.

He recalled a time when Michael Jackson had the opportunity to help the family out of their struggles and instead Michael offered to buy the rights to Bob Marley’s Catalogue.

“We went to Michael( Jackson), and say ‘hey Micheal, could you help us?’ We need some money, we don’t have no money and they trying to take ours, Michael say ‘no, I’ll buy it’.  MCA (also) wanted to buy it.” He said.

It’s not surprising that Jackson wanted to do business rather than help out the Marley family with a loan to straighten their business. He was notorious for buying music rights in the 1980s from even persons he considered his friends. 

After becoming friends with Paul McCartney, Jackson paid 47 million dollars to purchase ATV, from Australian billionaire Robert Holmes A Court. “ATV had the rights to 251 Beatles songs, including “Hey Jude,” “Yesterday” and “Let It Be, as well as 4,000 other songs and a library of sound effects,” Per Biography. 

McCartney recalled on an episode of David Letterman 2009 that, “I wrote [Jackson] a couple of letters and I said, Michael, don’t you think that after 30 years of being successful to this company you now own, don’t you think I could have a raise?” . Jackson’s response to his request was: “Oh Paul, that’s just business.” 

“Chris Blackwell” Rohan said, “the guy everybody don’t like, he loaned us(the family) the money,” he gleefully stated. 

“We were able to buy our father’s rights because when they sold it they gave the children first rights of refusal…We had (to raise the) money at the time to buy the publishing rights, name and likeness..we would never put our father’s likeness and rights in anybody’s hands, The Marley Coffee Owner said. 

“Thats why today it’s us”, he concluded on the subject.

Rohan’s sentiments are in alignment with his older brother Ziggy Marley’s suasions. The Grammy winner told World Music Views it has not even crossed his mind to sell his own extensive musical catalogue much less his father’s musical rights. 

“No sah, it’s not even a thing weh cross me mind, no man me a leave that for my children dem, maybe my grandchildren them will sell it,” he laughed. 

He continued, “As me say is a bigger picture a gwan so we half I look beyond right now, haffi look ahead too..there has been offers, all (for) me father, people offer thing but we nah sell that so, no sah”.

Bob Marley & The Wailers, Shaggy and Sean Paul are the most successful artists to ever come from Jamaica who enjoy a catalogue of hits that sell forever. Shaggy’s former manager Robert Livingston said if the price is right he would sell.

Livingston who is also a music producer owns an extensive catalogue of reggae and dancehall hits, and he told World Music Views,

“I wouldn’t say I would or wouldn’t, I get a lot of calls and approach like that but that’s not something I would talk, if somebody come with the right money you never know, I would never say no and never say yes so depend on the deal and the approach, its business, it’s fun but it’s also business, artists can go on a stage and sing but I can’t so I have to make sure its business.”

Much of the music Robert made back in the days like Super Cat’s “Don Dadda” he says is owned by Sony Music. Sony Music and Sony/ATV Publishing also owns a plethora of dancehall hits by Mad Cobra, Shabba Ranks, Diana King, Patra and others.

Shaggy, whose “It Wasn’t Me” hit renders him immortal in the sync licensing world, shared the sentiment with World Music Views that he has thought about the value of his catalogue in 2021, only months before his buddy Sting sold his catalogue to Universal Music Group for a whopping $300 million.

Sean Paul has been in deal with Island Records where he owns his masters for the last 6 years, but he told World Music Views that he doesn’t own his biggest hits from his first couple of albums that sharpe his career. He said he intends to re-record them so that he can own the new masters.

“VP records and Atlantic Records own all my hits. They were a big distribution link so those are owned by them but I have the right to re-record them after 15 years and I own those. I haven’t done it yet but this new relationship with Island Records allows me to record and release in Jamaica so I decided to put out singles. With them, I own my masters but I lease it to them for a few years and when they are done I get it back for ownership. It took me twenty years,” he told World Music Views.

Other new acts like Koffee, Shenseea and Stefflon Don have made music that has been consumed by international markets, but according to the Financial Times investors in music catalogues are looking for “proven hits”. Songs released in the last 5 years may not yet qualify for the big payday, because they would need a track record of earning.

Assessing dancehall and reggae music may require cultural ears and insights. Different metrics for assessing the value would perhaps spark greater interest in the genre based on how the genre is being consumed in the streaming era and not necessarily based on a 2 decade long cash pull.

Also it would not be fair to value new dancehall, reggae and other Jamaican music using the same formulas as you would Bruce Springstien or James Brown’s catalogue. For starters, radio is no longer the the main way the genre is consumed, neither is it a way to mark the hits. Skillibeng recently toured Europe and North America with sold out, crowd screaming fans without a radio hit, only free ad driven streamed YouTube hits.

Spotify’s Caribbean communicator Julia Lavender said that, “there’s a tremendous interest in sounds from Jamaica, and Jamaican genres have seen massive increases in listenership since Spotify first entered the market”, she said.

She claimed even dying genres like Ska has seen an increase over the year (2021) on the platform.

“Ska Revival has seen a 191% increase, Early Reggae a 183% increase, and Ska has a 105% increase. Globally, the playlist “Reggae Classics” is by far the most streamed Caribbean playlist in the past year(2020-2021). Sunshine Reggae, One Love and Dancehall Throwback are also amongst the most streamed playlists of the past year(2020-2021).”- Julia Lavender

Similar to YouTube, between reggae and dancehall on Spotify, reggae has been the most streamed globally but dancehall is the leading genre in Jamaica. Newcomer Skeng, released his first song in July 2021 and has since signed a publishing deal with Geejam Music as the most streamed YouTube artists in Jamaica, surpassing 100 million streams in the last year. He got a Nicki Minaj collab “Likkle Miss” (Remix) which peaked at no. 2 on the U.S. iTunes Hip Hop chart and top 10 overall on iTunes.

“Whilst reggae playlists dominate globally, Dancehall playlists dominate amongst Jamaican listeners, with Dancehall Official, Back a Yard, Island Pop, Dancehall Throwback and Dancehall Party on the top 5,” Lavender told World Music Views.