Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
Anyone who thinks music rights investment may have plateaued should check out the news this week about Pophouse Entertainment, the Sweden-based music investment firm co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, which announced it had raised over €1.2 billion (USD $1.3bn) for catalog and IP acquisitions.
The company’s inaugural fundraising included a fund of over €1 billion, with an additional €200 million raised via dedicated co-investment vehicles.
Meanwhile, Universal Music Group‘s annual report revealed that it had spent EUR €266 million ($288m) on catalog deals in 2024, up considerably from the EUR€178 million ($193m) it had spent the year before.
Elsewhere, Bertelsmann reported BMG‘s 2024 earnings this week, revealing the music company surpassed $1 billion in annual revenues for the first time, while EBITDA soared 37% YoY.
In copyright-related news, rightsholders got something of a shock with the release of a report from a think tank run by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Put simply, the report proposed tearing up the UK’s copyright protections to give the country’s AI developers a leg up.
Finally, MBW reported exclusively on the results of online protection firm Web Sheriff‘s investigation into a “decades-long campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation” targeting Morrissey. The revelations came amid legal action by Morrissey to put an end to the harassment.
Pophouse Entertainment, the Sweden-based music investment firm co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, has raised over EUR €1.2 billion (USD $1.3 billion) for its debut fund.
The Stockholm-based company announced on March 31 that Pophouse Fund I raised over €1 billion ($1.1 billion), reaching its hard cap and making it, Pophouse claimed, “one of the largest first-time private equity funds to be raised in Europe in the last decade”.
Pophouse said it secured an additional €200 million ($216m) through dedicated co-investment vehicles, “providing investors the opportunity to invest alongside the Fund and participate in select transactions”.
The Fund will be used to acquire music catalogs and IP…
Universal Music Group’s 2024 annual report proudly trumpets a solid commercial year — a period in which UMG amassed USD $12.88 billion in total revenues, with annual adjusted EBITDA soaring to USD $2.88 billion.
Beyond the headline numbers, the tome contains plenty of nuggets of industry intelligence that warrant closer inspection.
For instance, in 2024, catalog sales (defined as music older than three years) accounted for 66% of UMG’s recorded music digital and physical revenue (aka: money from record sales and streaming). Frontline releases (music less than three years old) accounted for 34%.
This represented a shift from 2023, when catalog sales accounted for 62% of UMG’s recorded music revenue…
An institute run by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has published a report that contains a list of suggestions that could fundamentally impact how music copyright is treated in the UK, in the AI age.
The report, titled Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a Global Leader in the Arts and AI, presents what it calls a “progressive solution” that appears to prioritize AI advancement over established creator rights.
The report’s authors don’t mince words about their bias toward big tech and AI developers, boldly stating that “the progressive solution is not about clinging to copyright laws designed for an earlier era but allowing them to co-evolve with technological change.”
The report’s recommendations appear to consistently favor AI developers’ interests, with the report explicitly stating that “there are better ways of supporting the creative industries in the digital age than through restrictive copyright laws for AI-model training…”
BMG generated EUR €963 million (USD $1.04bn) in annual revenues in 2024, up 6.4% YoY or up 8.1% YoY on an organic basis.
That’s according to a new set of annual fiscal results from the music company’s parent, Bertelsmann, published on March 31.
BMG’s adjusted operating EBITDA reached an all-time high of EUR €265 million ($287m), up 37% YoY compared to the prior year’s equivalent result of €194 million ($210m).
Bertelsmann attributed last year’s strong profit growth at BMG to “positive effects from digital direct sales, the strategic focus on core businesses and significant investments…”
Web Sheriff, a global online protection firm whose past clients include Prince, Bob Dylan, and Beyoncé, has completed a wide-reaching investigation into what it describes as a “decades-long campaign of fraud, disinformation, and defamation” – targeting Morrissey.
In a statement sent to MBW, Web Sheriff says that it has identified a “person of interest” behind the alleged online harassment campaign, and expects to identify additional perpetrators “imminently, in both Britain and Europe, as well as the United States”.
The company claims to have uncovered evidence of a “sophisticated attempt to associate the artist with false narratives designed to defame him and distort his [character]”.
Adds Web Sheriff: “The purpose of the fraud appears to be aimed at supporting the perpetrators of racist and far-right ideology by falsely associating an influential artist with their diatribe…”
MBW’s Weekly Round-Up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximise their income and reduce their touring costs.Music Business Worldwide
