Member Article

Music rights company that represents Paul McCartney closes $75m Series D backed by Balderton

Kobalt Music, the global music services company which has an office in London, has closed its $75m (approx. £57.9m) Series D round with participation from some major investors.

The investment arm of Hearst Entertainment, Hearst Ventures, led the round with contributions from London’s Balderton Capital and MSD Capital, which Kobalt will utilise to further scale its music royalties platform and adjust to the increasing dominance of streaming revenues in the industry.

Founded in 2000 in London, the company provides music services to artists such as Paul McCartney, The Chainsmokers and Dave Grohl, providing transparent royalties payments and fan engagement returns along with songwriting and networking services.

It now boasts ten offices around the world in cities including New York, Nashville, Sydney, Stockholm and Hong Kong, and claims to represent 40% of the UK and US top 100 songs and albums.

Willard Ahdritz, CEO of Kobalt Music, commented: “Guided by core principles of transparency, technology, and putting creators first, I have never been more sure that our platform, combined with our global creative team, is the right one to serve creators and rights owners in the rapidly evolving digital music environment.”

Neeraj Khemlani, president of Hearst Entertainment added: “The music industry is growing revenue again, and it’s due to the meteoric rise of music streaming on services like Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon and Pandora.

“Kobalt has built a global collections platform that plugs into the global usage files of music streaming companies to collect royalties faster and more efficiently for the artists and songwriters it represents.

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