Queen, Michael Jackson, Hipgnosis & More

Venue management doesn’t have the allure of, say, beloved classic rock catalogs, but the live entertainment business looks mighty attractive when music and sports fans are flocking to venues and eagerly paying record amounts for tickets. First announced in 2023, Legends’ acquisition of AEG’s ASM Global venue management operation finally closed in August — after Legends paid a $3.5 million civil fine for anti-trust violations. As Billboard explained in November 2023, when private equity partner Onex notified AEG it intended to sell its 35% stake in ASM Global, AEG opted to sell its stake, too. The venue management arm fits neatly into Legend’s expansive business which covers planning, ticket sales, hospitality, merchandise and partnerships. With live entertainment recovering nicely after the pandemic, the sale price was double what ASM Global was worth when AEG and Onex merged their facility management holdings to form the company in 2019.

After a six-year run trading on the London Stock Exchange, shareholders of Hipgnosis Songs Fund cast votes backed by more than 99.9% of shares to sell the pioneering music royalty fund’s portfolio of songs to Blackstone. Completed in July, the deal was the culmination of a roller coaster year for shareholders and Hipgnosis’ board, which had kicked off a search for external buyers in 2023 after the fund’s prolonged low stock price and record of mismanagement drove a shareholder revolt. Blackstone’s offer paid investors $1.31 a share and valued the fund’s market cap at $1.584 billion, higher than Concord’s competing offer of $1.25 per share. The trillion-dollar global investment giant now owns Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s portfolio of 65,000 songs, the private music assets in Hipgnosis Songs Assets and Hipgnosis Song Management, the investment advisor to both portfolios. Blackstone says it is investing in data analytics, investor education and developing greater transparency and disclosures to give investors a better understanding of music as an asset class.  

In the second big deal of 2024 in which a public company was effectively taken private, nearly 95% of French music company Believe’s shares were acquired by a consortium of investors formed with funds from prominent venture capital firm TCV and private equity firm EQT X, along with Believe founder/chairman/CEO Denis Ladegaillerie. Having first listed on the Paris Euronext stock exchange in June 2021, the consortium offered to buy a majority of its shares at 15.00 euros ($16.10) per share in February — a 21% premium over the prior closing price — so it could “better execute on its value-creation plan and accelerate the scale-up of an independent player supporting artists and label clients … [and] further grow and consolidate its position as a leader in the French and European markets.” Warner Music Group briefly considered acquiring Believe in March and estimated a bid of “at least” 17 euros ($18.24) per share, which would have valued the company at 1.65 billion euros ($1.8 billion). Warner backed out before making an official offer, saying it was given too brief a period to due diligence the company. 

Private equity firm New Mountain Capital completed its acquisition of performance rights organization BMI in February in a deal widely reported to be worth between $1.3 and $1.5 billion. The world’s largest performing rights organization is one of a few music-adjacent investments for New Mountain Capital. The New York-based investment firm with $45 billion in assets under management also owns a stake in Citrin Cooperman, which acquired Barry Massarsky’s Massarsky Consulting in 2022. As part of the deal, BMI’s affiliate songwriters and publishers were given $100 million from the proceeds of the sale this spring in recognition of their intrinsic value to BMI. 

In November, slightly more than three months after acquiring Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s hit-filled catalog of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young and Shakira songs, Blackstone-owned Hipgnosis Song Management (HSM) pledged those assets as collateral for a $1.47 billion music rights asset-backed security. It was HSM’s second ABS deal, and it valued the assets from the former fund’s catalog, plus an additional $700 million in debt, at around $2.3 billion. The money raised from the ABS is being used to pay down Hipgnosis’ existing debt and transaction fees and fund a reserve account, among other things. 

Private equity firm KKR has played in the music space for years, most notably in a catalog-acquiring partnership with BMG from 2009 to 2013 and from 2021 to the present. Catalogs had a good run, but now a good deal of smart money is pouring into live music. In the post-pandemic world of always-rising ticket prices, the concert business must look like an unmissable opportunity to an investment giant with $190 billion of assets under management and a hankering for a decent return on investment. Superstruct, founded in 2017 by Providence Equity Partners and James Barton, founder of the Liverpool nightclub Cream, organizes Budapest music festival Sziget and Wacken Open Air, the world’s largest heavy metal festival held in Germany. KKR agreed to acquire Providence’s stake in Superstruct in June for around a reported €1.3 billion ($1.39 billion).

While Queen’s contemporaries took advantage of a red-hot market for classic rock catalogs, the British four-piece was a notable holdout. At the same time, the Oscar-winning 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody revived interest in the band’s music, helping songs such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You” and “Radio Ga Ga” defy the gravity — for a few years, at least — that erodes all music’s popularity over time. The waiting paid off: Had the movie been only a moderate success, Queen would have fetched a handsome sum for its music rights. But the movie was a smash hit, earning Rami Malek a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury and standing as the top-grossing music biopic of all time. From a rights holder’s point of view, the movie delivered the intended effect: Bohemian Rhapsody “turbocharged” (in the words of Billboard’s Ed Christman) Queen’s catalog, lifting it to a new level rather than providing a one-time, short-lived boost. That’s how Sony Music ended up paying $1.27 billion for Queen’s recorded music and publishing, making it the highest amount ever paid for an artist’s catalog.  

When interest rates spiked following the pandemic, music companies still binging on catalog started to raise large amounts of capital through asset-backed securities. With an ABS, a music company can pool assets such as music publishing and recorded music catalogs and sell notes backed by the royalties those assets generated. One of the larger ABS deals came in October when Concord raised $850 million from an existing ABS that ballooned to $5.1 billion after the acquisition of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund and Mojo Music. This latest ABS is backed by the royalties of publishing, recorded music and related assets by such artists as Carrie Underwood, Genesis, Phil Collins, R.E.M. and Creed. The proceeds were to be used to redeem $500 million from a series of 2023 notes and acquire approximately $217 million of assets that will be put back into the ABS’s collateral pool.

Rare is a $600 million investment at a $1.2 billion valuation not the biggest catalog deal of the year. But in 2024, Michael Jackson didn’t make the biggest splash. (See Queen above.) Still, the eye-popping sum Sony Music paid for the King of Pop’s recorded music and music publishing catalogs is only half the story — literally. Sony paid $600 million for half of Jackson’s music rights, valuing the gloved one’s catalogs above $1.2 billion (and possibly up to $1.5 billion, according to some sources). The deal also excluded royalties from the Broadway play and other theatrical productions featuring Jackson’s music. While the Jackson estate was overshadowed by Queen, the superstar’s remaining 50% interest could be worth much more in the coming years. The catalog, which includes the best-selling album of all time, Thriller, is likely to get a boost in royalties in 2025 from a Jackson biopic, Michael, directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer trilogy) that’s currently scheduled for release in October 2025. 

In March, HarborView Equity Partners raised $500 million through an asset-backed security led by global investment firm KKR. “This capital will allow us to further our mission of investing in assets and companies driven by premier intellectual property while striving to ensure that creators are appropriately valued for their contributions to the world,” CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares said at the time. In the following months, HarbourView invested in independent studio Mucho Mas Media and acquired the rights of singer-songwriter James Fauntleroy and producer-songwriter Noel Zancanella. The Newark, N.J.-based company is also financing a biopic about hip-hop pioneer Queen Latifah.  

Pink Floyd’s long-awaited, perpetually postponed catalog deal, first mentioned by Billboard in 2022, finally closed in 2024 due to — or perhaps despite — the band members’ famously rocky relationship that slowed the wheels of progress. Each musician was said to have his own lawyers for the deal, which helps explain why it took until October for Sony Music to purchase a recorded music catalog that was being actively shopped for more than two years. For any buyer, though, owning a piece of the legendary psychedelic rock band is worth the wait. The $400 million deal covers a timeless recorded music catalog including the albums The Wall and The Dark Side of the Moon, as well as name, image and likeness rights, but not music publishing assets.  

This February, Universal Music Group invested $240 million for a 26% stake in Dundee Partners’ catalog acquisition platform, Chord Music. The novel deal means that the world’s biggest music company now manages the distribution and publishing administration for Chord’s 60,000 copyrights, and UMG can rely on its partners at Chord to help fund catalog acquisitions, thereby using less of its own money. Future catalog acquisitions will be held in Chord, which was valued at $1.85 billion after UMG’s investment. The public-private partnership — which is 74% owned by Dundee Partners, a family office run by Sam Hendel and John Chapman — is being eyed by Warner Music Group as a model for efficient capital management for catalog acquisitions. Chord’s assets include the catalog of “Halo” and “Rumour Has It” co-writer Ryan Tedder, as well as a stake in John Legend’s “All Of Me.”