Photo Credit: Kobalt Music
Kobalt Music achieved a 22 percent year-over-year (YoY) revenue increase during the 12 months ending on June 30th, 2022, generating north of $600 million, according to a new earnings analysis.
New York City-headquartered Kobalt, a majority of which belongs to Francisco Partners, just recently published an overview of its fiscal-year financials. Per the resource, the former AWAL owner “reported its second year of profitability” and turned in a 50 percent net revenue boost for the year-long period.
Behind the latter figure, Kobalt Music Publishing is said to have grown its revenue by approximately 20 percent during the stretch in question, and higher-ups emphasized their company’s “co-writes on hits” performed by Justin Bieber, Billie Eilish, Adele, and Beyoncé, to name some.
Additionally, Kobalt, which reportedly raised over $500 million last year, touted its “stellar roster of clients,” including Stevie Nicks, the Foo Fighters, and Roddy Ricch. The company further disclosed that it had dropped approximately $300 million on catalog acquisitions and advances during the 2022 fiscal year.
Also in the detail-light release about the FY 2022 financials, Kobalt drew attention to its seldom-discussed AMRA society. Quietly acquired by Kobalt in 2015, AMRA has in the interim “collected almost $500 million of digital royalties on behalf of songwriters and rights holders,” according to its parent company.
Moreover, AMRA is said to have “processed a record-breaking 41.1 billion music royalties” throughout the 12-month window at hand, up from 29.3 billion during the prior year, and execs declared the division “a key strategic part of Kobalt” as well as “the next generation of PROs.”
Addressing Kobalt’s fiscal-year showing in a statement, CEO (and former BMG exec) Laurent Hubert communicated in part: “Our team, who support some of the best songwriters in the world, continues to drive our success. We are seeing the increased benefits of our laser focus on publishing and AMRA. I continue to be optimistic about our value to clients and believe we are the best destination for songwriters today.”
Kobalt founder and chairman Willard Ahdritz echoed the remarks in comments of his own, relaying in part: “We’ve doubled down on our core publishing business and AMRA, our digital global society, to continue to innovate for the benefit of creators and rights owners. After launching AMRA in 2015, it is starting to take a massive stage in global digital collections, and I cannot wait to see its positive impact on our clients and the whole industry.”
In early 2022, Ahdritz joined the “unicorn board” of African tech fund Norrsken22, before signing on with AI-powered music-marketing startup Unhurd as an advisor three weeks ago. And last month, Lickd, Kobalt, and Empire announced a deal to bring the latter two companies’ catalogs to the metaverse as part of a tie-up with Decentraland.