Chord Music Partners said on Thursday that global private investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners joined Universal Music Group as a strategic investor in its music rights acquisition and management venture.
Formed in 2021 through an inital partnership with KKR, Chord owns more than 60,000 copyrights, including stakes in the Fleetwood Mac hits “Dreams” and “Landslide,” the catalog of OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, and most recently acquired a 49% stake of Big Loud’s stake in Morgan Wallen‘s early masters. As of 2024, Chord is majority owned by Dundee Partners, the investment office of the Hendel family, and UMG has an equity stake worth more than 26%.
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The investment of funds managed by Searchlight, a firm with more than $18 billion in assets under management, will help Chord find and execute on recorded music and publishing rights acquisitions faster to achieve greater scale, according to a statement from the companies.
“Searchlight’s expertise, network and ability to meaningfully contribute toward expanding Chord’s premier [intellectual property] portfolio make Searchlight an ideal strategic partner for our next chapter,” Sam Hendel, Dundee Partners’ managing principal and co-founder of Chord, said in a statement.
Searchlight partner Darren Glatt said they were attracted to Chord’s diversified platform and its portfolio of rights to works by The Weeknd, Lorde and David Guetta, which he said has “evolved Chord into the desired home for the works and legacies of the world’s premier artists.”
The joint investment and catalog management platform model has become a popular way for major music companies to aggressively bid for highly desireable music rights in a way that minimizes their reliance on their own balance sheet. Assets that are bought through Chord, like Big Loud’s share of the masters to Morgan Wallen’s first couple albums, are administered through Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) and recorded music through UMG’s Virgin Music Group (VMG).
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Warner Music Group revealed a similarly structured joint venture with Bain Capital worth $1.2 billion thi ssummer, of which Warner owns 50% and earns revenue from managing, marketing and administering the assets.
Boyd Muir, chief operating officer at UMG, which recently invested an additional 30 million euros in Chord, said Chord is part of their long-term strategic investment plans.
“The structure is working exactly as we envisioned – enabling us to move quickly to acquire high-quality catalogs, without significant capital allocation over time,” UMG Chief Operating Officer Boyd Muir said on a call last month discussing the company’s quarterly earnings. “Chord is successfully raising capital and building a strong deal pipeline.”
Searchlight was advised on this transaction by Lazard and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
