Harmony has lengthy been rumored to be exploring the opportunity of a sale at a $4 billion valuation.
In keeping with Bloomberg, that’s true, however the firm has been in search of an “extraordinary-plus” supply within the area of $6 billion.
Certainly, sources talking to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw counsel that, to this point, Harmony has turned down acquisition bids price $4.5 billion and $5 billion.
Harmony is majority owned by pension fund, Michigan Retirement Techniques.
In contrast to personal fairness or different monetary traders, pension funds are usually searching for ‘sluggish and regular’ returns from belongings over lengthy durations of time.
This possible permits Michigan to be choosier within the sale provides it entertains for Harmony than many different varieties of sellers at present working in music.
Harmony is known to show over round $500 million a yr and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. As well as, the corporate runs places of work in Nashville, New York, London, Berlin and Miami.
The corporate’s majority proprietor, Michigan Retirement Techniques, has invested greater than $1 billion into the music firm. The agency is minority owned by members of its administration.
”We acquired some very robust bids, and we handed on all of them”
Scott Pascucci, Harmony, talking to Bloomberg
Chatting with Bloomberg, Harmony’s Chief Govt Officer, Scott Pascucci, mentioned: ”We acquired some very robust bids, and we handed on all of them.”
Harmony Music Group was fashioned after Harmony Data acquired Fantasy Inc in 2004. Harmony Music Group shortened its title to Harmony in 2019.
The trendy-day Harmony was successfully fashioned in 2015 when the agency merged with The Bicycle Music Firm to type Harmony Bicycle Music.
Right now, Harmony has three main working divisions: Harmony Recorded Music, Harmony Music Publishing, and Harmony Theatricals.
In each music publishing and recorded music, Harmony has construct its portfolio by way of a sequence of acquisitions:
In 2005, Harmony acquired Telarc Worldwide, a Cleveland label with greater than 1,000 jazz, classical and blues recordings, for an undisclosed sum.
Harmony acquired Rounder Data in 2010, with a catalog of over 3,000 recordings. Harmony mentioned on the time that the mix of Rounder’s masters “with Harmony Music Group’s wealthy catalog of greater than 10,000 grasp recordings strengthens Harmony’s standing as one of many world’s most vital impartial file firms”.
In March 2013, Harmony itself was acquired from Village Roadshow Leisure Group by Wooden Creek Capital, an funding supervisor. This acquisition introduced now-Harmony CEO, Scott Pascucci, to the music firm.
In July 2014, Harmony introduced the acquisition of the Vee-Jay Data catalog, which included over 5,000 grasp recordings from the likes of Little Richard, John Lee Hooker, and Jimmy Reed.
In April 2015, Harmony introduced its merger with The Bicycle Music Firm to type Harmony Bicycle Music. Previous to merging with Harmony, Bicycle – owned by investor Steve Smith – had accomplished over 100 publishing and grasp recording catalog offers of its personal, together with the acquisition of Wind-Up Data in 2013.
In Could 2015, Harmony introduced a double acquisition of two impartial file labels – Vanguard and Sugar Hill – from Welk Music Group. Harmony additionally introduced the elevate of $100 million in capital for additional acquisitions.
In the identical month (Could 2015), Harmony introduced one other double acquisition, this time of Fearless Data and Wind-Up Data.
In October 2015, Harmony acquired an undisclosed stake in file label Razor & Tie. Harmony later totally acquired Razor & Tie in 2018.
In 2016, one other double label acquisition arrived, with Harmony shopping for each Americana/people/blues specialist HighTone Data and the recorded music belongings of Bandit Data.
In June 2017, Harmony made its largest acquisition but: the buyout of Netherlands-based Imagem for a sum believed to be in extra of $550 million. The deal noticed Harmony ingest 250,000-plus copyrights from Imagem, taking Harmony’s publishing catalog above 380,000 works.
In February 2018, Harmony confirmed the acquisition of the Tams-Witmark musical theater library, containing over 120 titles from acclaimed writers akin to Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Cy Coleman, and Jule Styne.
In September 2019, Harmony introduced the acquisition of rock label Victory Data and its sister publishing firm, One other Victory.
In December 2019, Harmony introduced the acquisition of historic classical music writer, The Sikorski Music Publishing Group.
2020 introduced two enormous acquisitions to the Harmony steady, each of which reportedly value over $100 million apiece. The primary noticed Harmony purchase a majority stake in Los Angeles-based music writer, Pulse Music Group. Then, in August 2020, Harmony Music Publishing introduced the acquisition of the Think about Dragons catalog. MBW reported that Harmony acquired the author’s share of the band’s catalog, along with a co-publishing share, in perpetuity.
As well as, in October 2020 it emerged that Harmony had acquired a catalog from Spirit Music Group that encompassed publishing rights initially developed by B-Distinctive.
