The British owned company Hipgnosis has bought the rights to over 300,000 songs today (02/11/2020). This is their biggest buy to date costing them over £250 million with songs from the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Demi Lovato, 50 Cent, and more. The rights to the songs were previously held by Kobalt Music Copyrights.
Hipgnosis, founded by music industry veteran Merck Mercuriadis, is an IP (Intellectual Property) investment company registered in Guernsey. They buy the rights to songs and allow the public to invest in songs as they gain fame, listens, views, and streams over time. Co-founded by CHIC guitarist and frontman Nile Rodgers, Hipgnosis has an already impressive portfolio before this buy with artists like the Kaiser Chiefs, Blondie, and Journey.
With songs like The Chain, and Go Your Own Way from Fleetwood Mac and In Da Club from 50 Cent, this new acquisition was a big one. Adding to their already impressive portfolio of artists, songwriters, and producers this will add more interest to investors both old and new. However, although Fleetwood Mac and 50 Cent are big, the biggest buy may be worth more.
Amongst the purchases was 50% of the Christmas hit All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey! The festive staple was co-written by Walter Afanasieff alongside Carey. Afanasieff’s half was the half acquired by the investment giant. With many reasons why this is such a monumental buy, inverters are sure to be quick on this one. With Christmas just around the corner, this is one of the biggest buys and investments that could happen.
All I Want For Christmas Is You…it is a seasonal must. You can’t go a single Christmas without hearing this song basically every day and of course, we always sing along. With almost 700,000,000 streams on Spotify making over $60 million as of last year (2019) the chance to invest in such an era-defining song could be one of Hipgnosis’ best assets to date.
This acquisition couldn’t come at a better time for Hipgnosis. As we are now in November and nearing Christmas, songs such as Carey’s will start to be played as we get our festive playlists ready. Not only is it the right time but it may be the right year also. As many suffer from the pandemic and the world’s mental state weakens many have already started to decorate, plan, and start Christmas to cheer themselves and others up.
Not only is this such a large purchase in the sense of how incredible this is, but it is also large in the fact it is the biggest purchase of its kind in a number of years. This purchase marks the biggest purchase in music publishing since Concord acquired Imagem for over $550m in summer 2017. The only difference is that Concord was for a music company and Hipgnosis bought copyrights.
If you want to invest in songs such as Carey’s and other big names now may be the time.
