Firebird Music Launches $750 Million Catalog Fund, Seeks VP

Photo Credit: Iyan Ryan

Firebird Music is looking to make a splash in the crowded song-rights arena, as it’s launched a $750 million catalog fund and set its sights on hiring an industry vet to lead the operation.

The self-described “next generation music company” Firebird just recently kicked off its catalog expansion, and one of the involved dealmakers reached out to DMN with the details.

Behind the $750 million tranche, Pinnacle Financial Partners put up $400 million in debt, with the remaining $350 million attributable to equity investments. On the latter front, Ares Management now holds a minority stake in Firebird, which has welcomed MD Jeevan Sagoo to its board.

Meanwhile, The Raine Group, an early Firebird backer, is still the largest stakeholder in the company, which former KKR partner Nat Zilkha and ex-Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard founded in 2022.

Regarding what comes next for Firebird and its three-quarters of a billion dollars in deployable capital, Zilkha touched on a top-level objective of “partnering with artists around their existing portfolios of creative work across recorded music and music publishing.”

Moreover, Firebird has stakes in Red Light Management, Mick Management, and Transgressive Management, to name a few of many, and last year launched a JV called YB Inc. with Yungblud.

Across the board, then, Firebird says it provides “career and brand guidance to over 1,000 artists worldwide to help them…build longer lasting, higher impact, more profitable careers.”

Bearing in mind the “profitable” descriptor, does that mean IP deals with the repped professionals are forthcoming? Though we don’t have a concrete answer at present, we do know that Firebird is expanding its team in an effort to sniff out worthwhile transactions.

And in general, with a mountain of already-wrapped IP plays and billions waiting to be spent on song rights, this might prove a tall task. Enter the job description: Firebird intends to bring on a VP of music rights acquisitions “to lead the identification, evaluation, and execution of music catalog and rights acquisitions.”

Tasked with building “a world-class catalog acquisition operation,” the VP must therefore possess “8-10 years of experience in music rights valuation and catalog acquisitions,” per the description.

What will those acquisitions look like in practice? Once again, we lack a one-stop answer. But as IP investors have committed the better part of $10 billion to the red-hot space during the past six months alone, bidding wars, continued full-company plays, a growing focus on NIL rights, and blockbuster purchases are distinct possibilities.