Three years in the past, MBW instructed you that Tempo Music, the music rights fund launched by non-public fairness large Windfall, was seeking to promote its catalog at a valuation of round $500 million.
The sale didn’t occur. As rates of interest started to rise steeply in markets together with the UK and US, blockbuster acquisitive exercise in music famously cooled.
Final 12 months, although, with rates of interest declining and/or trying extra steady in main territories, chatter started to select again up about Tempo.
In October, MBW predicted that music’s M&A market would quickly see a development of PE-backed firms beforehand often called music rights patrons changing into sellers — with an acquisition of Tempo doubtlessly as soon as once more on the playing cards.
Now we’re listening to more and more loud whispers that we’re weeks away from the conclusion to this story: a sale of Tempo’s portfolio at a valuation of round half a billion {dollars}.
These concerned in energetic talks to shut an acquisition, we’re instructed, embrace at the least one main music firm, plus impartial and finance-backed gamers.
Because it launched in 2019, Tempo Music has acquired a catalog of rights/earnings streams from stars together with Wiz Khalifa, Twenty One Pilots (through Tyler Joseph), Korn, Florida Georgia Line, and hit songwriter/producer Philip Lawrence.
Windfall initially launched Tempo Music in 2019 in partnership with Warner Music Group.
Since 2021, Tempo has been run by CEO, Josh Empson, following the exit of earlier CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares (who now runs HarbourView).
Nonetheless, Tempo hasn’t been visibly energetic in music’s M&A marketplace for a while.
Windfall’s web site means that the final press bulletins about Tempo conducting catalog acquisitions – together with a cope with Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots – date again to 2021.
Tempo’s personal official web site now not seems to be dwell on-line.
Final 12 months, Tempo Music sued Miley Cyrus and a number of other music business firms, together with Sony Music, Reside Nation, Warner Chappell, and Harmony Music Publishing, alleging copyright infringement.
Tempo’s lawsuit argued that Cyrus’ megahit Flowers illegally cribbed from Bruno Mars smash Once I Was Your Man.
Tempo acquired a share of the copyright in Once I Was Your Man from Philip Lawrence, one of many track’s co-writers, in 2020.
The lawsuit learn: “Any fan of Bruno Mars’ Once I Was Your Man is aware of that Miley Cyrus’ Flowers didn’t obtain all of that success by itself.”
Flowers allegedly “duplicates quite a few melodic, harmonic, and lyrical parts of Once I Was Your Man, together with the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, sure bars of the refrain, sure theatrical music parts, lyric parts, and particular chord progressions,” added the grievance.Music Enterprise Worldwide
