Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Mestel: Primary Wave evaluates iconic status over target genre quotas

Larry Mestel · Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30) · Oct 30, 2017 · at 31:00

Larry Mestel, founder and co-CEO of Primary Wave, discusses portfolio construction and genre diversification with Ted Seides.

0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.6s
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“We don't look at it and say, oh, we're light in country music or light in hip hop or light in R&B. We want to be diverse in terms of artists. And when I say genre diverse, I'm talking about we don't only want to have rock and roll music. We don't only want to have R&B music. We don't only want to have dance music. We don't want to be genre specific, but when we look at a deal, we don't necessarily look at the genre. We look at how iconic the artist is and how iconic the songs are.”

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More from Larry Mestel

Opinion
Mestel: Music royalty collection and administration is a commodity
“We want to be a company that delivers opportunity for artists, not focus on what we think is a commodity, Which anybody can do well, and which a lot of companies do do very well, which is collecting and administering. We want to focus on marketing and promotio…”
Larry Mestel Oct 30, 2017 ▶ 10:31 Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30)
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“Wasn't until relatively recently that mechanical revenue, which is physical sales of physical CDs, downloads, coupling with digital streaming now really started to level off and now is starting to ascend again.”
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Mestel: Major labels neglect legacy artists to chase high-margin new acts
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Larry Mestel Oct 30, 2017 ▶ 8:54 Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30)
Disclosure
Primary Wave's first major deal was 50% of Kurt Cobain's catalog
“Well, the first really big deal that we did was for the Kurt Cobain Music Publishing Catalog. We partnered with Courtney Love on that. We bought a 50% interest in the music publishing assets.”
Larry Mestel Oct 30, 2017 ▶ 15:02 Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30)
Disclosure
Mestel: Primary Wave holds thousands of copyrights, not millions like majors
“Unlike the Warner chapels of the world or the universals of the world, the Sony's of the world, the BMG's of the world that have millions and millions of copyrights. We only have thousands of copyrights, but all of our copyrights are exceptional.”
Larry Mestel Oct 30, 2017 ▶ 16:23 Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30)
Disclosure
Mestel: Primary Wave avoids auctions to focus on artist partnerships
“Frankly, we do not like to buy at auction. We almost never Participated in auction every once in a while. If the assets unique, we will, but we are really focused on artists that want the service that we have because we like to partner with the artist.”
Larry Mestel Oct 30, 2017 ▶ 23:08 Larry Mestel – Making Music Royalties Sing (Capital Allocators, EP.30)
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