In the jazz and blues recording industry, there could hardly be bigger news if Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday and Miles Davis returned from the dead and put on a free show in Central Park.
Concord Records and Fantasy announced yesterday that Concord has completed its acquisition of Fantasy and has merged the two companies to form a new entity called the Concord Music Group, Inc. Concord Records is 31-year-old label focused on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats with a catalog of over 1,000 albums from such figures as Ray Brown, Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Tito Puente, and Mel Torme. Concord is currently enjoying its greatest success ever with the platinum release of Ray Charles’s final recording, Genius Loves Company, as well as popular records by Barry Manilow, Peter Cincotti, and Ozomatli.
Fantasy owns outrageously outstanding catalogs of jazz, blues, soul, rock 'n' roll, and spoken word including legendary recordings by John Coltrane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Vince Guaraldi, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Staple Singers, Little Richard, Albert King, Thelonious Monk, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Sonny Rollins, Lenny Bruce, Jimmy Scott, and numerous others via its own sterling recording history and its acquisition over the years of the Prestige, Milestone, Riverside, Contemporary, Debut, Pablo, Specialty, Stax, Original Jazz Classics, Takoma and Kicking Mule catalogs. Fantasy also owns and operates the world-class Fantasy Recording Studios in Berkeley, California.
As part of the transaction, Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity investment firm focused on media, provided new equity capital to the Concord Music Group. Chris Morris reports in the Hollywood Reporter that the sale price was over $80 million. The owners of Concord Records, TV producer Norman Lear and Hal Gaba, remain substantial shareholders in the combined entity, which will be distributed by Universal.
Article comments
1 - dab
What? This move is not nearly as important as you describe it to be. Are you the publicist for Concord Records? No one else would make such a comparison.
2 - Aaman
Wow - that's a selection of CDs worth perusing.
Eric, I do not know much about this part of the industry, but are these two companies kinda independent? I mean, are they part of larger conglomerates (Universal/TimeWarner?)
And isn't 80 million low for a catalog this size?
3 - Eric Olsen
yes, these are two of the last remaining independents - I thought the price for this kind of catalog to be too low as well. The sense I have is that Fantasy was actively trying to sell, so that changes the equation quite a bit: if you are actively selling then you are pretty much stuck with the highest bidder, which Concord apparently was.
We have super relations with both of these organizations by the way, and I wish them nothing but the best.
4 - JR
I'm surprised at the direction of the takeover - given their respective catalogues, I would have expected Fantasy to be by far the richer company. Either I don't know anything about what sells, or assets don't have a strong relationship to sales.
I thought Stax was taken over by Atlantic/Warner a long time ago; I wonder how Fantasy got a hold of them. Again, another indication to me that Fantasy should be the larger label.
5 - Eric Olsen
Stax had a deal with Atlantic while they were still functional but the catalog has been woned by Fantasy for some time. Fantasy has been acquiring other labels, steadily building their catalog over the years, but they were the ones for sale, not Concord - it's really just a matter of who is in buying mode and who is in selling mode