Cultura Voice

  Which big-money music catalog will Hipgnosis Songs Fund boss Merck Mercuriadis add next to his company’s $2.2 billion-valued portfolio? The ever-reliable (ahem) Daily Mail rumored this week that Mercuriadis has been in conversations with Noel Gallagher about buying up the Oasis writer’s publishing rights. Gallagher, meanwhile, told the Daily Mirror his song rights will all come back to him by 2025, that he’s happy to flog them for £200 million, and that – rather than give this cash to his children – he’s going to use it to buy a super-yacht and a Learjet and, in his own words, “f*****g have it”. A bit of silliness in a relatively quiet week for the music business? Sure. Either way, Hipgnosis has revealed it’s targeting a new raise of £150 million ($210m) via a fresh share issue on the stock market. It’s also told investors it intends to up its credit facility to make its war chest even larger Hipgnosis is doing so not only to buy beautiful songs, but to compete in an increasingly...

  Will Jack Dorsey and Square be able to transform TIDAL into an industry-leading streaming service complete with a suite of premier financial tools for artists? That’s the vision… though Jay-Z could be forgiven for not caring too much either way. Mr Carter has just completed the sale of 80% of TIDAL to Square in a deal now confirmed to be worth $302 million – around six times the price he originally paid for the platform back in 2015. Jay-Z wasn’t the only one chucking around impressive financial figures this week. Merck Mercuriadis‘ Hipgnosis acquired a catalog from songwriter/producer Andrew Watt for a price MBW estimates was in the eight figures, and upwards of $45 million. (Rumors suggest Mercuriadis has also closed the purchase of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song catalog for around $150m – but no confirmation has been forthcoming on that one so far.) Elsewhere, Primary Wave announced a multi-million dollar acquisition of its own, picking up the publishing catalog of songwriter...