Two weeks faraway from a catalog cope with Large Loud Shirt founder Craig Wiseman, Spherical Hill Music has introduced the acquisition of Geoff Kulawick-founded Linus Leisure.
In whole, the newer of the purchases contains round 3,000 compositions and roughly 20,000 masters, in keeping with Spherical Hill, which executed the buyout particularly by way of its Music Royalty Fund III LP. The concerned events haven’t publicly revealed the transaction’s exact financials or the post-sale operational particulars of 23-year-old Linus Leisure.
Behind the sizable assortment of IP, although, Linus possesses the recorded and publishing catalogs of Borealis Data, Stable Gold Data, Stony Plain Data (which it acquired in 2018), Spring Hill Music (purchased in 2015), The Kids’s Group (bought in 2009), and True North Data (with which it “amalgamated” in 2019), to call some.
In the meantime, the “overwhelming majority” of Waterdown, Ontario-headquartered Linus’ roughly 2,000-album catalog was recorded by Canadian acts, amongst them Buffy Sainte-Marie, Canadian Music Corridor of Fame-inducted Bruce Cockburn, Gordon Lightfoot, and Stan Rogers, per Spherical Hill’s announcement message.
Moreover, the label’s present artist roster options the likes of Marc Jordan, fiddler Natalie MacMaster, Large Wreck, Canadian Brass, and Sophie Milman, in keeping with Linus’ web site. Addressing the acquisition in a press release, Josh Gruss, CEO of the overarching Spherical Hill, made clear that the label acquisition “was actually a one off.”
“This funding contains among the most celebrated music and performers to come back out of Canada and helps our technique of investing in and supporting the expansion of iconic music,” communicated Gruss. “The chance Linus Leisure offered to us was actually a one off and we’re very excited to have these unbelievable Canadian artists included within the Spherical Hill steady.”
In feedback of his personal, the previous Warner Chappell and Virgin Music higher-up Geoff Kulawick expressed the idea that “now’s the correct time for us at hand the reins over to a accomplice.” As initially talked about, the deal is simply the newest in a sequence of 2023 investments from Spherical Hill, which hasn’t been alone in persevering with to pursue presumably costly performs.
To make certain, August’s first three or so weeks alone have delivered catalog agreements involving Cher and Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group, Tape Room Music, Main Wave and former Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung, Harmony and Plain White T’s frontman Tom Higgenson, BMG and Snap!’s Michael Münzing, and others.