Fighting With Capital: beatBread Launches $100M Fund for Indies

Finance level beatBread said connected Thursday it is launching a $100 cardinal money to enactment autarkic labels and distributors arsenic the indie assemblage faces consolidation driven by larger euphony companies and large investors.

The Global Independence Fund provides a excavation of dedicated superior for loans to indie companies seeking to turn and stay autonomous. Labels tin pat the money to get against their catalogs, get financing for the advances they usage to onshore caller artists, oregon to screen different discretionary concern needs.

The money comes unneurotic conscionable months aft beatBread announced it secured $124 million from equity investors and loans and that its co-founder and CEO Peter Sinclair died, some successful August.

The money aims to fortify the indie assemblage pursuing efforts by large euphony companies to grow their marketplace stock by bringing indie labels and distributors nether their umbrella, the institution said successful a statement. The largest of these deals — Universal Music Group’s planned acquisition of Downtown — is facing regulatory scrutiny by Europe’s antitrust authorities with their determination connected whether to let the woody to proceed expected astir the year’s end.

“For excessively long, autarkic labels person had to play by rules acceptable by incumbents, wherever entree to superior comes astatine the outgo of control, and the accidental to motion and enactment artists is besides constricted by entree to capital, adjacent erstwhile those distributors oregon autarkic labels whitethorn different beryllium successful the precise champion presumption to develop, marketplace and enactment a fixed artist,” Matthew Tilley, beatBread’s caput of creator & manufacture development, said successful a statement. “The Global Independence Fund is 1 constituent successful the ongoing combat to alteration that.” 

Labels who are besides members of the indie commercialized groups AIM, AIM Ireland, WIN and IMPALA are offered entree to OpenPlay, a exertion level for managing and monetizing euphony assets, and each labels who get from this money are eligible for co-investments from beatBread’s backing network, the institution said successful a statement.

Noemi Planas, caput of the planetary commercialized radical for autarkic euphony companies WIN, applauded the motorboat of the money for adding to artists’ options.

“The aboriginal of euphony should beryllium shaped by the diversity, creativity, and resilience of autarkic labels and artists,” Planas said. “Expanding entree and prime of backing options helps marque that aboriginal a reality.”