This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Deals Labels & Publishers
Chrysalis acquires more recordings as part of Warner’s indie offload
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 31 October 2017
Warner Music is still digging around the back of its big cupboard of musical delights looking for some dusty relics it can offload to meet the commitments it made to the indie label community back in the days when at least five people remembered what EMI was. And to that end it’s just biked over five more artist catalogues to the all new Chrysalis.
Which means that tracks made by The Swinging Blue Jeans, Dario G, Lucinda Williams, Grant Lee Buffalo and Toumani Diabaté that were previously controlled by Warner Music are now part of the new Chrysalis recordings repertoire. Quick, someone update the music industry’s global rights database so every music user is fully up to speed. Oh, yeah, we forgot to make that database. OK, let’s just write it in crayon on the wall.
As much previously reported, when Universal Music bought the EMI record company in 2012, competition regulators forced it to sell off a chunk of the former British major’s European assets, in particular the Parlophone label. Warner Music bought most of those assets, and reached a deal with the indie label community to avoid running into its own issues with the European competition regulators. At the heart of that deal was a commitment to sell off a certain amount of catalogue to the indie label sector.
It was as a result of that arrangement that newish music company Blue Raincoat was able to acquire the old Chrysalis Records brand and much of the former label’s UK catalogue, allowing it to restore Chrysalis as an active indie record company. The all-new Chrysalis has since expanded its recordings repertoire with further acquisitions from Warner, polishing off various musical relics with a view to better exploiting the shiny classic tracks that are sitting underneath the dust.
Commenting on the latest acquisitions, Chrysalis Records boss Jeremy Lascelles said: “Not by intention, but I don’t think we could have come up with a much more eclectic selection of artists to add to the Chrysalis roster”.
He went on: “But all of them – from Lucinda Williams, one of my own personal favourite artists of the past couple of decades, to the wonderful world music sounds of Toumani Diabaté – are giants in their respective areas of music. It’s also a joy to add classic hit songs like ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ and ‘Sunchyme’ to our catalogue. I am proud to include all these great artists on the Chrysalis Records label”.
