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
Warner partners with Influence Media and BlackRock on music rights investments
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 25 February 2022
Influence Media Partners has announced a new partnership with Warner Music and investment outfit BlackRock that will invest in, you guessed it, some of those lovely music rights. Specifically “premiere compositions from some of music’s most influential creators”.
New York-based Influence Media Partners announced it had launched a new fund to buy up music rights last year, initially working in partnership with Michigan-based pension set up MERS. The new partnership with Warner and BlackRock is allowing the company to ramp up its investments somewhat.
In an increasingly crowded market place for music rights investments, Influence Media distinguishes itself a little by focusing on more contemporary songwriters and songs, rather than buying up the catalogue of heritage artists.
Though, of course, by investing in newer talent and newer works, that puts you up against more conventional record labels and music publishers. That said, Influence Media has another USP too, with a particular interest in supporting female artists and songwriters.
A statement confirming the Influence/Warner/BlackRock alliance says that partnership creates a “a music rights platform” which “brings together expert resources with vast experience across music and entertainment, investment management, and marketing to help increase the value of its music properties through active management”. Fun times.
“To date”, it adds, “$300 million has been deployed across multiple catalogues, comprised of select copyrights and, in several cases, future compositions of artists, songwriters, and entrepreneurs. The model has opportunities for additional scale in acquisition capital”.
Influence also confirms in that statement that this new music rights platform has already done deals with Tainy, The Stereotypes, Jessie Reyez and Skyler Stonestreet, who between them have written with and for artists like Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Bruno Mars and Shawn Mendes.
Confirming the new partnership and its initial catalogue acquisitions from Warner Music’s side, the major’s Temi Adeniji says: “In partnership with the first-rate teams at Influence Media and BlackRock, these catalogues will be cared for by a supergroup of music lovers. Together we’ll bring new opportunities to some of the most talented artists and songwriters of this generation”.
Meanwhile, Influence Media Founder and Co-Managing Partner Lylette Pizarro McLean adds: “To paraphrase what my favourite music entrepreneur Beyoncé famously said, not enough women of colour have had a seat at the table in the music industry, so we went ahead and chopped down the wood to build our own table”.
“We’ve built a brilliant, savvy, and diverse team that’s also nimble enough to move at the speed of culture, and we couldn’t be prouder to be in business with best-in-class partners like BlackRock and Warner Music Group”, she continues. “Our initial investments in modern evergreens represent a new generation of iconoclasts in music, both commercially and artistically”.
