Bob Valentine first joined Concord 24 years ago, in 1999, after Norman Lear\u2019s Act III Communications bought the music firm \u2013 then called Concord Records \u2013 out of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
At this point in history, iTunes was still two years from launch; Daniel Ek was 16 years old, and still at school.<\/p>\n
Concord, meanwhile, was a jazz label turning over around USD $8 million a year\u2026 not far from 100 times smaller than its annual revenue today (somewhere between $600m and $700m).<\/p>\n
In the two-and-a-bit-decades since, Concord has spent comfortably north of $2 billion (via equity and debt capital) to build one of the modern music rights business\u2019s most significant players. Today, it owns the rights to over a million songs\/compositions, musicals, plays and recordings.<\/p>\n
Bob Valentine has played an instrumental role at every crucial moment in Concord\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Valentine worked as Concord\u2019s Chief Financial Officer from 2005 to 2021, and then as its President for the past two years. Earlier this month, he stepped into the hot seat as Concord\u2019s CEO, succeeding the exec he\u2019d worked side-by-side with for the past 10 years at the company, Scott Pascucci.<\/p>\n
Ordinarily, when an experienced fiscal specialist like Valentine (who began his career as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley) takes over the Chief Exec reins at any company, it brings with it a mite of suspicion that said company may be \u2018tidying up\u2019 its books in order to sell.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s definitely not the case for Concord, says Valentine, which continues to be majority-owned by its long-term backer, State of Michigan Retirement Systems.<\/p>\n
Valentine\u2019s claim checks out: it\u2019s barely been a year since Concord entered into a not-exactly-cheap process of exploring a sale (engaging Goldman Sachs as its wing-person).<\/p>\n
That process led to a ~$5 billion takeover offer <\/a>from an unnamed suitor, but this price-tag wasn\u2019t deemed large enough for Michigan, Pasucci, and Valentine \u2013 who were looking for \u201cextraordinary\u201d offers only. Concord shut the process down and walked away.<\/p>\n Since then, Concord\u2019s made some major M&A moves \u2013 including, last year, the eight-figure acquisition<\/a> of Australia\u2019s Native Tongue (and related expansion in Australasia), plus the ~$300m acquisition<\/a> of music rights from Phil Collins and members of Genesis. (The latter was a rare thing over the past 12 months: a nine-figure artist catalog acquisition.)<\/p>\n Last month, Concord bulked up its frontline recorded music credentials with the announcement<\/a> of a JV label, Pulse Records, with the widely respected Pulse Music Group team. (Concord become a majority owner<\/a> in Pulse Music Publishing via a $100m+ deal in 2020).<\/p>\n The launch of Pulse Records reflects a key prong of Valentine\u2019s future strategic plan for Concord.<\/p>\n With over 800,000 songs in its publishing portfolio \u2013 including the 380,000 it acquired from Imagem in 2017 via a $500m+ deal <\/a>\u2013 Concord has in the past six years bolstered its recordings business (Concord Label Group) via acquisitions of storied imprints like Fania (2018<\/a>), Independiente (2018<\/a>), and Savoy (2017<\/a>), in addition to acquiring the hip-hop-heavy frontline catalog of L.A Reid\u2019s HitCo in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n As things stand, Concord\u2019s masters business includes ownership of more than 275,000 recordings, including tracks from 300 Grammy Award winners \u2013 plus the world\u2019s No.1 kids\u2019 music brand, KIDZ BOP (worldwide to date: 8 billion streams, 22.5 million album sales).<\/p>\n Valentine, however, senses there is a chunk more opportunity for Concord in the frontline record space; he estimates that 85% of his company\u2019s current revenues come from catalog, rather than newly-developed, music.<\/p>\n Hence the launch of Pulse Records with Pulse\u2019s co-founders, Scott Cutler and Josh Abraham \u2013 plus Pulse\u2019s President, Ashley Calhoun. Valentine calls Pulse \u201c one of the leading frontline creative teams and first-class incubators for culturally relevant music\u201d.<\/p>\n Pulse\u2019s track-record in the hit-making space is already glittering \u2013 its writer signings, to pluck two examples from recent megahits, include Aldae (Flowers<\/em>, Miley Cyrus; 1.3 billion<\/strong> Spotify streams to date), and Tyler Johnson (As It Was<\/em>, Harry Styles, 2.5 billion+<\/strong> Spotify streams to date).<\/p>\n
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