HarbourView Equity Partners has acquired the publishing catalogs of two multi-Grammy award-winning country music artists: Lady A and Brad Paisley.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter, Paisley sold his music to HarbourView for $25 million.
The new deals marks another big move for HarbourView, founded nine months ago by former Tempo Music CEO, Sherrese Clarke Soares, with backing from Apollo Global Management.
HarbourView has acquired over 36 catalogs to date, including the catalogs rock of rock band Hollywood Undead and multi-GRAMMY Award winning duo Dre & Vidal.
In January, the investment firm also bought the catalog of Latin music superstar Luis Fonsi. Fonsi is most notably known for working with Daddy Yankee on megahit Despacito.
Lady A, formerly Lady Antebellum, and Paisley’s addition to HarbourView’s portfolio would expand its portfolio of award-winning artists to include country music stars.
Just two years after it was founded in Nashville, Lady A won the Country Music Association Awards’ New Artist of the Year award and earned its first Grammy in 2010 for Best Country Performance by Duo or Group with Vocals.
The Lady A trio consists of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood. Scott, the daughter of country music singer Linda Davis, was rejected by American Idol twice.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight in 2011, the Lady A frontwoman said she never got to see the judges.
“Lady A has become one of the 21st century’s premier vocal groups. Built around rich vocal harmony, vivid emotional writing and a smooth fusion of Country, rock and pop, Lady A have long been a model of mainstream success.”
HarbourView Equity Partners
But after performing at local venues in Nashville in its early years, Lady A went on to sign a record deal with Capitol Records in July 2007 and rose to the charts with its hits including its longest-lasting number one single Need You Now, which spent five weeks at the charts in 2009. The track is also revered as the highest certified song by a country group.
Additionally, the band has also earned CMA “Vocal Group of the Year” trophies for three straight years, five Grammy Awards, Billboard Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards, and a Tony Award nomination.
“Lady A has become one of the 21st century’s premier vocal groups. Built around rich vocal harmony, vivid emotional writing and a smooth fusion of Country, rock and pop, Lady A have long been a model of mainstream success,” HarbourView said.
Lady A has sold more than 18 million album units and 34 million tracks, and have clocked up nearly five billion digital streams.
The band’s hits inclue “American Honey,” and “Our Kind of Love,” from the group’s album “Need You Now,” released in January 2010. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts.
Separately, Brad Paisley has also made his mark in the country music scene as one of the genre’s most decorated male solo artists, earning three Grammys, two American Music Awards, 14 Country Music Association Awards and 15 Academy of Country Music, among others.
Paisley has a whopping 24 No. 1 hits, of which 21 was written by him. In the mid-2000s, he became the first to achieve 10 consecutive Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 singles and to date, his works have amassed nearly 4 billion on-demand streams.
Outside the music scene, Paisley also stars on an ABC prime-time television special called “Brad Paisley Thinks He’s Special,” which has garnered over 18.1 million views as of late.
He also works with Peyton Manning in a multi-year ad campaign with Nationwide insurance and partners with Boot Barn to develop Moonshine Spirit by Brad Paisley, a line of merchandise including jeans, hats, T-shirts, jewelry, belts and woven shirts.
Both Lady A and Paisley have been inducted as members of the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville founded in 1925. The Grande Ole Opry is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.
HarbourView hired Fox Rothschild LLP as its legal counsel in signing the deal with Lady A and Paisley, while both artists were represented by Greenberg Traurig LLP’s Jess L. Rosen.
HarbourView, on its website, said it has up to $1 billion of investable capital.
The Newark, New Jersey-based company, which has offices in Los Angeles and New York, said it sees seeing significant opportunities to invest globally in entertainment and media over the next decade.
“I’ve created HarbourView because I truly believe that content has the ability to amplify global perspectives and change the world,” Clarke Soares said in October 2021 when the firm was founded.
Apollo is also bullish on HarbourView’s potential, with Bret Leas, Apollo Senior Partner and Global Head of Structured Corporate Credit, saying the firm’s investment in HarbourView will allow the management firm and its clients to make meaningful commitments to growth-oriented intellectual property in the entertainment space.
Apollo, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, had about $513 billion of assets under management as of the end of the first quarter, according to its recent earnings report.Music Business Worldwide