Digital music company Believe has made a major play for the publishing market, acquiring Liverpool-based Sentric in a deal that values the company at €47 million on a 100% basis.
Believe described the buyout as the first step in its bid to create a 'digital-first innovative music publishing business, with a wider strategy focused on securing investment and acquisition opportunities where the Group can leverage its global presence and digital expertise to offer new solutions to artists and music rights-holders on a large scale.'
In 2021, publishing revenues represented the third source of revenues in the music industry (after recording and live) with €8.5 billion (according to CISAC’s Global Collection Report 2022). Digital collections from streaming services are the fastest growing source of publishing income and are expected to represent the majority of publishing revenue in the future. And from a geographic standpoint, there is, says Believe, an ‘alignment between the largest publishing markets (Europe, followed by the United States and then fast-developing Asian markets) and where Believe is best positioned and able to bring high-value services to its clients’.
Based in Liverpool and with offices in the US and Europe, Sentric is a global independent music publishing platform with partnerships spanning 70 collecting societies, operating in over 200 territories and representing more than four million songs and over 400,000 songwriters either directly or via industry partners. It proprietary platform is regarded as one of the most advanced solutions in the market, able to manage publishing for self-releasing artists profitably and at scale, while also offering global publishing deals to rights-holders at each stage of their development.