Yet Another BMG Acquisition: Chrysalis Music Publishing
We were welcomed back from Thanksgiving this morning by the news that German media conglomerate BMG Rights Management is buying the Chrysalis Music Publishing catalog for a grand total of £107.4 million (or $168.6 million USD). Wow!
We’d like to say we didn’t see this coming, but we had a feeling this would happen after BMG snapped up Evergreen Copyrights, Stage 3 Publishing and Cherry Lane Music (Elvis, anyone?) in rapid succession earlier this year. According to Billboard Magazine, this acquisition probably makes BMG the world’s fourth-largest music publisher by global market share.
In addition to being the home of writers like Debbie Harry of Blondie, Chrysalis is also the home of some well-loved music execs like Jeff Brabec and Jessica Hobbs. We think that if BMG is lucky/savvy, they’ll hang onto the executive talent that has been looking after these copyrights for the past few years.