Sing what's up with you. Once again Vincent Bolloré, the Breton financier who has been collecting disappointments in his Italian campaigns between Tim and Mediaset for years, relies on the jewel of the Vivendi group: Universal Music, one of three sisters who control the music market about to enter Wall Street next year. In the meantime, the music label has scored a big coup by making sure control of Bob Dylan's work: 300 million dollars for the songs and recordings of the Greenwich Village minstrel. Six hundred titles in all, or 500 thousand dollars a piece for the exclusive of Blowin' in the wind o Tambourine man for the singer who, remember the New York Times, in the early 100s he settled for $XNUMX on his first contract.
And yet, judging by the prices they run, it may once again have been Bolloré who made the deal, thanks to the genius of Lucien Grainge, one of the legends of the music world, in open competition with Merck Mercuriadis, the former manager of Beyoncé, Elton John, Guns and Roses and other names in the music scene who, starting from the exploitation of the catalogs of Vip, he was able to give life to Hipgnosis, a company that appears among the first 250 freshmen of the FTSE index of the London Stock Exchange, capable of climbing to position number 35 in the City ranking, with an increase of 24 percent from its debut less than two years ago.
The secret? Mercuriadis he sensed that, in the streaming season and remakes between cinema and TV, the value of warehouse funds once condemned to end up in the attic is destined to grow both for the nostalgia effect and because the market has expanded dramatically. “The editor's real job – she explained – now consists in knowing how to place a piece of music in an advertisement or in a serial made in Hollywood. Without neglecting the effect that a viral video can have in the age of social networks”. It was the viral networks that launched "Dreams", an old song by Fleetwood Mac, released 43 years ago, to the top of the US charts.
And so Mercuriadis has been hoarding music since the XNUMXs investing 1,2 billion pounds in what, until a few years ago, were considered warehouse funds. For this amount, the former manager insured himself 33 thousand songs, partly bought by Kobalt, an investment fund that controls the catalog of various artists (Justin Bieber and Mariah Carey, among others). A small revolution in tastes made possible by streaming, which allows past products to be "stitched" as if they were new with the result of at least partially compensating for the damage caused by the stoppage of live shows.
Hence the appetites of the business: in recent days a new competitor has entered the field, Round Hill Music, founded by a former Bear Stearns banker, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange with an offer of 128 thousand pieces, the result of a catalog worth 300 million dollars. Piracy? It doesn't scare anymore, after the launch of Spotify and Apple Music. Everything conspires, in short, for the relaunch of music starting from safe second-hand (just think of the Pooh's evergreen successes in Italy) largely amortized over time. “The big news – explains a British analyst interviewed by Les Echos – is the interest of the financial markets, attracted by high returns and the possibility of activating economies of scale. Better than focusing on the promotion of new artists, which is more expensive and with an uncertain return”.
How many songwriters can listen to Dylan via Spotify worldwide? This explains the attention of the Stock Exchanges: in the year of the great crisis of cinemas and playgrounds music thus takes its revenge after being crushed for years by piracy. And the Stock Exchanges take note of it. In addition to Universal in the new year will come the Warner Music IPO (13 billion dollars) together with a shower of initiatives and new jobs. “There is an enormous demand for new services”, concludes Mercuriadis. A large part of his business is to track down artists, often elderly, to convert them to YouTube secrets. But one's work doesn't end there song manager. “To my collaborators – he concludes – I offer a package of 20 pieces. They have the task of extracting new value”. And with just one nugget you made Bingo.
