Primary Wave is reportedly in the “advance stages” of negotiations to acquire Kobalt Music, a deal that would create another significant independent player in music publishing, alongside the combined BMG/Concord that is also currently being negotiated into existence.
According to Billboard’s sources, Primary Wave could pay more than $1.5 billion to acquire the Kobalt business. That deal would bring Kobalt's core rights administration business, its collecting society AMRA and rights management platform Kosign into the Primary Wave group.
Those are successful businesses in their own rights, but the deal would also mean that Primary Wave could start administrating all the music rights it has itself acquired directly in-house, rather than relying on other publishers to provide admin services.
Kobalt on its own is already considered one of the big five music publishers, alongside BMG and the publishing divisions of the three majors, Universal, Sony and Warner. As BMG looks set to increase its market share through the proposed merger with Concord, the combination of Kobalt and Primary Wave would mean both of the bigger indies in music publishing would get considerably bigger this year.
Private equity firm Francisco Partners has owned 90% of Kobalt since 2022, with the remaining 10% controlled by founder Willard Ahdritz; investment firm Dundee Partners; and Matt Pincus, whose company Songs sold its catalogue to Kobalt in 2017.
Although best known for its rights administration services - helping to manage, monetise and administrate song copyrights owned by self-publishing songwriters and other publishers - Kobalt has also directly acquired a stack of music rights over the years.
Two of those catalogues were sold in 2020 and 2021, to the Hipgnosis Songs Fund and Chord Music Partners. But then in 2023, Kobalt announced a new partnership with Morgan Stanley Tactical Value to buy up more rights, which will presumably also be part of the Primary Wave deal.
New York-based Primary Wave, which has a talent management business as well as being active in music publishing, has been quietly amassing a sizable catalogue of music rights over the years. It sold a portion of its music publishing assets to BMG back in 2013, but has continued to acquire rights and grow its catalogue since then, most recently agreeing a $200 million deal with Britney Spears.
