A New York based venture capital firm, Dimensional Associates, has bought up the music publishing company owned by DreamWorks, the entertainment group founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, in a deal reportedly worth $50 million.
Dreamworks sold their higher profile record label to Universal Music Group in a $100 million deal last year. At the time they held on to their publishing company, which manages the rights of artists like John Denver, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rickie Lee Jones and Duke Ellington's main collaborator, Billy Strayhorn.
Dimensional weren't the only company interested in the publishing outfit once Dreamworks indicated their interest in selling it - other possible buyers were in talks with the entertainment group right up until the venture capital firm confirmed their deal.
Commenting on his purchase, Dimensional's CEO, Danny Stein, told the New York Post: "We love the asset class and we think there's a lot of opportunities to exploit quality copyrights".
It is not yet clear if Dimensional plan to keep DreamWorks Publishing as a stand alone company, or whether they plan to integrate its operations in any way with eMusic, the digital music service they acquired off Vivendi last year.