Sony Music Group is on the verge of pulling off the biggest artist catalog deal in music history.<\/p>\n
The company has reportedly agreed to acquire the catalog of legendary rock band Queen<\/strong> in a landmark deal reportedly worth approximately GBP \u00a31 billion<\/strong> (USD $1.27 billion at current exchange rates).<\/p>\n Sony is understood to be buying the band’s global music publishing rights, their ‘name and likeness’ rights, plus their recorded music interests \u2014 including their recording copyrights outside of North America, where their masters are owned by Disney Music Group<\/strong>.<\/p>\n (Sony<\/strong> already administers Queen’s publishing rights, while the band’s recorded music is currently globally distributed via Universal Music Group<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n At the end of May, Bloomberg<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that<\/a> Sony was negotiating a deal with Queen and that the major music company was \u201cworking with another investor\u201d<\/strong> on the transaction.<\/p>\n According to MBW’s sources, noises are getting louder that said investor is Apollo Global Management<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It’s currently unclear how much of the $1 billion+ Queen catalog pricetag<\/strong> Apollo is involved in, and whether its participation in the deal with Sony is based on a debt agreement, equity agreement, or a combination of the two.<\/p>\n Sony has teamed up with outside capital<\/strong> for catalog investments before.<\/p>\n The firm’s ~$550 million<\/strong> acquisition of Bruce Springsteen’s publishing and recorded music catalog in 2021<\/a> was (on the publishing side) part-financed by Eldridge Industries<\/strong>. On a smaller scale, in 2022<\/a> Sony co-invested with Domain Capital<\/strong> to acquire the publishing catalog of hit country writer Ashley Gorley<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Apollo’s<\/strong> mooted involvement in Sony’s Queen catalog deal comes after the investment giant recently backed Concord<\/strong> in the latter company’s bid to acquire the assets of Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF).<\/p>\n Concord<\/a> officially pulled out of the HSF bidding war in May,\u00a0leaving global investment giant Blackstone\u00a0as the frontrunner<\/a> in the takeover battle for HSF.<\/p>\n Before that outcome, Apollo<\/strong> had committed both debt and minority equity to a bidding entity (Concord Chorus Ltd) that offered $1.51 billion<\/strong> to acquire HSF.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in May, Sony Music’s sister company, Sony Pictures<\/strong>, was reportedly in talks to partner with Apollo<\/strong> on a potential<\/a> $26 billion<\/strong> bid for Paramount<\/strong>. (Currently, it looks likely<\/a> that Paramount will end up merging with Skydance.)<\/p>\n Apollo Global Management<\/strong> has also been active elsewhere in the music rights market in recent years.<\/p>\n In 2022, Apollo Global Management<\/a> led what it claimed to be the “largest-ever” ABS (asset-backed securities) transaction for Concord<\/strong>, when the latter company priced a $1.8 billion<\/strong> bond offering backed by over 1 million music copyrights.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in 2021, former Tempo Music CEO <\/a> Sherrese Clarke Soares<\/strong> set up HarbourView Equity Partners<\/strong> with backing from Apollo. HarbourView has since amassed roughly $1.6 billion<\/strong>\u00a0in \u201cregulatory managed assets\u201d.<\/p>\n As of March 31, 2024<\/a>, Apollo<\/strong> itself \u2013 across multiple industries \u2013 had approximately $671 billion<\/strong> of assets under management.<\/p>\n Queen’s catalog, including both publishing and recorded music rights, is jointly and equally owned by the band\u2019s surviving \u2018classic\u2019 line-up (Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon) plus the estate of Freddie Mercury.<\/p>\n Disney Music Group<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0(via its ownership of Hollywood Records) owns Queen\u2019s recorded music rights in North America; the band owns them everywhere else in the world. (DMG has a global distribution agreement with Universal Music Group.)<\/p>\n Hits<\/em> reported<\/a> last month that UMG, as Disney\u2019s distributor, will retain distribution rights in North America, although Sony will receive the royalties.<\/p>\n UMG\u2019s worldwide distribution rights will then transfer to Sony in 2026 or 2027, making Sony Music the sole distributor and owner of all Queen content globally.<\/p>\n Queen band members Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon \u2013 plus the Freddie Mercury estate \u2013 each own equal shares in the company\u00a0Queen Productions Ltd<\/strong>, which owns the group\u2019s recording catalog outside the US and Canada.<\/strong><\/p>\n Queen\u2019s members (plus Mercury\u2019s estate) also own the global rights to Queen\u2019s music publishing catalog via their company\u00a0Queen Music Ltd<\/strong>, which is administered by\u00a0Sony Music Publishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queen Productions Ltd posts its annual financials on the UK Companies House. The latest, published last week<\/a>, shows the company\u2019s fiscal performance in FY 2023 (to the end of September last year).<\/p>\n The company reported\u00a0GBP<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a339.47 million<\/strong>\u00a0in revenue for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023. At the average exchange rate for 2023, that\u2019s equal to\u00a0USD $49.1 million<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That represents a small YoY revenue decline of\u00a03.5%<\/strong>\u00a0from the\u00a0\u00a340.89 million<\/strong>\u00a0($50.41 million<\/strong>) that\u00a0the company reported<\/a>\u00a0for the 2022 fiscal year, according to the financial\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0filed with the UK\u2019s Companies House.<\/p>\n Of the\u00a0\u00a339.47 million<\/strong>\u00a0in revenues for FY 2023, royalties accounted for\u00a0\u00a336.1 million<\/strong>, down\u00a02.0% YoY<\/strong>\u00a0from fiscal 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News comes after Apollo teamed with Concord in failed $1.5 billion bid for Hipgnosis Songs Fund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":205408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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