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Business News Management & Funding
Power Amp investment was Madness but not mad
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 5 October 2010
Music investment firm Power Amp has announced that its first artist investment deal – into Madness album ‘The Liberty Of Norton Folgate’ – has resulting in a 46.9% return for investors (annualised at 29.6% including tax reliefs, I should add, for the seventeen people who know what that means).
In return for stumping up the cash to fund the Madness album release and accompanying live and promotional activity, Power Amp’s investors got a cut of all the recording, publishing, live, sponsorship and merchandising action. Madness, meanwhile, were able to reboost their public profile while keeping hold of the copyrights in the new content.
Power Amp founder Tom Bywater told CMU yesterday: “We’re delighted to have completed the deal profitably with Madness. It was our first artist deal and has proved that our transparent, straightforward, ‘artist-centric’ model works and is set to become the blueprint for investing in established artists. It also demonstrates we can turn deals over quickly, keeping investors capital working, as funds are rolled into the forthcoming album releases from our latest projects Charlotte Church and Carl Barât, both of whom have written their finest work to date”.
Speaking for the band, Garry Blackburn of their co-managers Anglo, added: “Our agreement with Power Amp Music has been a big success. Their investment allowed Madness the freedom to make and release their finest album for many years and gave us the ability to choose and manage the best routes to market. We have fully recouped the deal in less than two years and all of the band’s rights have now fully reverted back to them, which is something that wouldn’t have happened with any other investment company”.
