New Partners for a Music Catalog

In the digital age, old music catalogs remain important.

Dutch Investors Buy Rights to Rodgers & Hammerstein, Adding to Library

Music library in this case.











The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization includes copyrights to musicals including 'The Sound of Music,' above, among others. Richard Rodgers, below at left, and Oscar Hammerstein, circa 1957
















A music-publishing fund primarily owned by a giant Dutch pension fund has acquired the music-publishing catalog of the iconic songwriting duo Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, in a deal that highlights the ongoing value of music-publishing assets even in the age of online piracy.


Music publishing -- the ownership and exploitation of copyrights on melody and lyrics -- has grown in importance in the digital age. It's a part of the music business that has held its value far better than the sound recordings owned by record labels, because fees from publishing rights can be collected from a broad range of uses, not all of which are vulnerable to piracy. For instance, music publishers collect royalties when songs are played on the radio, in restaurants and bars and when any version of a song (not necessarily the original recording) is used in a movie, television show or commercial.

Not quite tangible, it is, nonetheless, a treasure trove of assets. [Tangible can be defined as perceptible by the senses, though especially the sense of touch.]

Michael Jackson bought the rights to much of the Beatles catalog in the 1985 for $47 million. In the decades since, that purchase has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in cash -- partly through the sale of a 50% interest to Sony -- that have partially insulated Mr. Jackson from a variety of financial travails.

A $47 million investment returned "hundreds of millions."

Imagem said that the acquisition of the Rodgers & Hammerstein catalog makes it the world's largest independent music publisher, with annualized revenue of more than more than €100 million, or about $126 million, and the rights to more than 200,000 pieces of music. The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization includes copyrights to the music and lyrics to musicals including "Oklahoma," "The King & I" and "South Pacific." It also holds 12,000 songs by 200 other writers including Irving Berlin and Mr. Rodgers's other famous lyricist-collaborator, Lorenz Hart.