Influence Media emerged as a new entrant in the music rights-buying market last year, with the intention of proving that “female equity is just as important as female equality” by looking beyond the pantheon of white, male musicians for catalogues to buy. Now the company has a lot more money to pursue that ambition, having secured funding from investment giant BlackRock and Warner Music Group.
The trio plan to create “a music rights platform that will invest in and manage premier compositions from some of music’s most influential creators” with an emphasis on current songs, as well as women artists and songwriters. The partnership has already spent $300m buying catalogues, but the Wall Street Journal, which broke the news, claimed that $750m is available overall.
“To paraphrase what my favourite music entrepreneur Beyoncé famously said, not enough women of colour have had a seat at the table in the music industry, so we went ahead and chopped down the wood to build our own table,” said Influence Media founder Lylette Pizarro McLean.
As with BMG and KKR’s joint rights-buying venture, this partnership is also further evidence that ‘Big Investor’ money is not always a rival to traditional music rightsholders: it can be something they work with.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools :: Wyng
Through Music Ally’s internal marketing campaign tracking, we’ve recently discovered an interesting website by the…