McCartney Takes His Talents To Kobalt

Talk about timing; EMI Music Publishing is just being taken over by Sony/ATV and one of their biggest clients bolts. It seems that Sir Paul McCartney didn't like the looks of what was going down with EMI/Sony and decided to take his talents elsewhere.

But he didn't go to another so-called "major" publisher. No, Paul took his MPL Communications to the upstart Kobalt Music Group, who is quickly becoming one of the major players in the publishing world. Why? Because Kobalt has built it's business on technology, which they claim gets the songwriter paid as much as 25% more and up to two years faster than the more traditional publishing companies. In fact, Kobalt has enticed the likes of Pear Jam, Trent Reznor and Dr. Luke into it's fold, and its share of Top 100 hits has already grown to 15%, which is just under what long time market leader EMI has.

While MPL's move might be symbolically ominous, it doesn't hit the bottom line of EMI as much as you might think, with estimates at less than 10%. The deal with Kobalt does not include North America, Britain and Ireland, which MPL administers itself. But MPL is a heavier hitter than just the McCartney catalog as it includes songs by Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Broadway shows like The Music Man.

This just goes to show that even old traditional businesses can be improved with technology, and when that happens, it doesn't take long for artists to take notice and jump on board.

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The EMI Publishing Deal Is Now Complete

As EMI winds down from being a major record label, thereby taking the number of majors from 4 to 3, the first part of the deal is now complete. An investor group led by Sony/ATV Publishing now brings the famous and powerful EMI Music Publishing under its wing.

The group, which includes the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, Jynwel Capital of Hong Kong, Blackstone's GSO Capital Partners, the estate of Michael Jackson and mogul David Geffen, paid $2.2 billion to purchase EMI Publishing, which appears to be a pretty good deal. EMI Publishing has long been considered the jewel of the industry, with a catalog of 1.3 million songs including classics like "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "New York, New York," as well as songs by The Beatles, The Police, The Beach Boys, Kenye West, Alica Keys, Justin Beiber and many other superstars.

Terms dictated by the Jackson Estate stipulate that EMI Music Publishing still remains as a separate company, which is all well and good, but it's still under the same conglomerate umbrella.

Isn't this country supposed to have anti-trust laws to prevent major consolidation like this? It's not only a bad idea for one company to have such a large market share (well over 30%), but it's bad for the writers too. With that many songs to administer, it's too easy to fall between the cracks.

This is just another indication of how badly the music business needs a major reset, even more so than we're seeing today.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.