FROM SONY’S NINE-FIGURE LABEL BUY TO SONGTRADR’S $50M FUND RAISE
There was some behind-the-scenes debate this week as to what Sony Music paid to buy a majority-stake in Todd Moscowitz’s Alamo Records. One well-placed source told us that, whatever Sony paid, it valued Alamo at a whopping $250 million. Other sources close to the deal suggested that this mooted $250 million figure was an exaggeration. All sources agreed that what reported (“Sony paid comfortably north of $125 million”) was true. The question is: how far comfortably north? Further sources have since led us to believe that Sony Music paid somewhere between $125 million and $200 million for its majority stake in Alamo. We don’t know the precise size of majority stake Sony acquired. But, for example, if it bought a 75% chunk of Moscowitz’s company for $190 million, that would indeed give Alamo a ≈$250 million valuation. These guessing games don’t touch on perhaps the most interesting quirk of the deal, though: Alamo was originally launched as a JV with Universal Music Group. As ...