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Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties, weekly podcast on the business

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Speaker 1: of entertainment. Variety Deputy music editor jem as well enjoining

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Speaker 1: us today is Larry Mustel, founder and CEO of Primary

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Speaker 1: Wave Music, which has become one of the biggest players

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Speaker 1: in the booming market for music catalogs. Now you might

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Speaker 1: have heard about Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan selling their

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Speaker 1: catalogs for six hundred million dollars, Genesis and Phil Collins

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Speaker 1: selling their's for three million, Stevie Nicks for a hundred million.

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Speaker 1: Over the past few years, dozens of artists have sold

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Speaker 1: the rights to their music catalogs for eight or nine figures.

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Speaker 1: And there are all kinds of reasons why this has happened.

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Speaker 1: Artists are getting older and basically a state planning the

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Speaker 1: pandemic for the copyrights can be a great investment, and

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Speaker 1: the booming market is bringing more and more buyers and

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Speaker 1: sellers to the table. But what do you do with

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Speaker 1: that catalog once you bought it? The older which was

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Speaker 1: basically to sit and wait for the songs to make

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Speaker 1: money through radio sales, streaming use in films or TV

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Speaker 1: shows or advertising campaigns, Broadway shows and lots of other ways,

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Speaker 1: but a more recent approach is to work aggressively to

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Speaker 1: pitch those catalogs to drive up their value, and that's

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Speaker 1: an approach the Primary Wave has supersized since it was

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Speaker 1: founded by Miss Stell in two thousand six. Beginning with

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Speaker 1: the Kurt Cobain Song Catalog and a few others, Primary

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Speaker 1: Waves acquired catalogs from Bob Marley, Whitney Houston, James Brown,

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Speaker 1: Stevie Nicks, Ray, Charles Hall, of Notates, Bing Crosby, the Ramons,

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Speaker 1: Luther Van Dross, Half the Princess State, and dozens more.

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Speaker 1: And although Primary Wave is technically a music publishing company,

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Speaker 1: they're just as much a marketing company, buying older catalogs

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Speaker 1: with a proven track record and putting them to work

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Speaker 1: in every way they can think of. Their eighty five

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Speaker 1: person staff specializes in everything from digital promotion and merchandizing

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Speaker 1: to film and television produce, auction, Broadway shows, and lots more. Now,

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Speaker 1: back in the nineties that was considered selling out, but

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Speaker 1: these days musicians don't make anywhere near as much money

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Speaker 1: from streaming as they did from c D and record sales.

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Speaker 1: And also back then, nobody was really doing it very well.

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Speaker 1: Primary Wave has been a leader in tastefully marketing music catalogs,

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Speaker 1: and they pride themselves on doing it in partnership with

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Speaker 1: the artist or their artists the state, meaning they don't

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Speaker 1: do anything without their cooperation. As a result, their deals

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Speaker 1: over the years include everything from the Whitney Houston biopic

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Speaker 1: coming out later this year, to a deal with Converse

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Speaker 1: for custom Kurt Kobain sneakers, and Alice Cooper with Cooper

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Speaker 1: Tires and their warch has got a lot bigger with

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Speaker 1: a two billion dollar investment from Brookfield Asset Management with

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Speaker 1: CIA as a strategic part So even as the catalog

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Speaker 1: market has begun to cool off due to rising interest

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Speaker 1: rates in our uncertain economy, Primary Wave is still poised

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Speaker 1: to keep doing its thing for many years to come.

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Speaker 1: Listening to strictly business, primary Wave CEO and founder Larry Nostell,

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Speaker 1: why don't we start big picture. Tell me about the

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Speaker 1: company's latest moves the last couple of months, uh, A

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Speaker 1: billion dollar deal, et cetera. Just give us a quick,

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Speaker 1: you know, short overview of what you guys have accomplished

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Speaker 1: in the last few weeks a couple of months. Well

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Speaker 1: that we've been very acquisitive over the last five or

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Speaker 1: six years, and it's continuing to pick up. And we

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Speaker 1: wanted to find UH an additional partner that had very,

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Speaker 1: very deep pockets, that understood the business, that viewed things

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Speaker 1: in terms of permanent capital UH and Brookfield was the

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Speaker 1: perfect partner at the right time. UM. We took them

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Speaker 1: on as a minority partner in our primary wave holding company,

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Speaker 1: and they made available to billion dollars of capital, which

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Speaker 1: is a mind boggling number for this industry. I think

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Speaker 1: it's it has to be one of, if not the

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Speaker 1: largest independent music deals, UH, you know, of the last

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Speaker 1: twenty years. UM. And in addition to to Brookfield, we

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Speaker 1: brought in C. A. A As a strategic partner as well. Excellent.

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Speaker 1: So what catalogs have you acquired lately? And we'll come

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Speaker 1: back to more about the Brookfield deal and deal in

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Speaker 1: a bit, but you know, music wise, what I what

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Speaker 1: have you acquired lately? What are some big deals you've

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Speaker 1: done lately? UM? We we did, We've done Paul Rogers,

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Speaker 1: you know, Free and Bad Company. We announced Joey Ramon

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Speaker 1: the Ramones UM and and so UM, you know, we

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Speaker 1: we probably have somewhere along the lines of twenty to

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Speaker 1: twenty two deals we are currently negotiating. And Jim, when

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Speaker 1: I tell you that since the the articles and our

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Speaker 1: on our press release on the Brookfields a deal came

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Speaker 1: out last week, there must be an additional eight nine

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Speaker 1: twenty deals that we're sorting through right now of of

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Speaker 1: phone calls that have come in or emails that have

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Speaker 1: come in on potential acquisitions just in the last four

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Speaker 1: or five days. Okay, so that's forty deals. How do

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Speaker 1: you keep up with forty deals? You know, it's not easy.

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Speaker 1: We have four in house attorneys and what we typically

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Speaker 1: do is we do all of the letter of intent

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Speaker 1: due diligence, financial due diligence, legal due diligence as much

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Speaker 1: as we can up front at the l o I

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Speaker 1: stage UM, and once we sign a letter of intent UM,

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Speaker 1: we then go outside and hire outside accounting firms and

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Speaker 1: outside law firms to do further confirmatory due diligence. But

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Speaker 1: the reason why, one of the one of the reasons

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Speaker 1: why artists and attorneys and business managers love doing business

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Speaker 1: with us is because we very very rarely ever change

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Speaker 1: the purchase price in the letter of intent. Because we

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Speaker 1: do a lot of work up front. People hate when,

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Speaker 1: you know, our competitors go and try to renegotiate deals

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Speaker 1: or change deals that they've shaken hands on. And a

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Speaker 1: big reason is because they just don't do as much

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Speaker 1: work up front as we do to get to the

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Speaker 1: point where you're making an offer. We think that's critical, um,

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Speaker 1: in terms of of dealing with people that we deal

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Speaker 1: with in in the in the music acquisition space, there

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Speaker 1: there has to be a trust. And you know, we've

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Speaker 1: closed almost a hundred percent of the letters of intent

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Speaker 1: that we've signed since we started sixteen years ago. Well,

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Speaker 1: certainly is not the only thing that sets you apart,

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Speaker 1: I should say. Right now, we're sitting in the conference

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Speaker 1: room and there's this amazing board on the wall that

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Speaker 1: looks like the biggest ice cream store in the world

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Speaker 1: time and it's got like candy popcorn. Yeah, it's got

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Speaker 1: like all these artists names, which are the catalogs that

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Speaker 1: you controlled, and all these deals listed underneath them in

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Speaker 1: remarkably neat handwriting. Um, tell me that was why good handwriting?

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Speaker 1: To there we go, tell me about what these what

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Speaker 1: a lot of these are? I mean, obviously people can't

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Speaker 1: see them. Well, I wish I had my glasses on.

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Speaker 1: I didn't think that I needed my glasses for this.

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Speaker 1: Uh I can I can vaguely make it out. You know, certainly,

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Speaker 1: all of the uh the iconic deals, legendary deals that

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Speaker 1: we do, we we put up on what we call

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Speaker 1: the war board, and you know, we we we have

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Speaker 1: these artists all over the wall and we fill in

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Speaker 1: every time we do a deal. We're filling in those

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Speaker 1: advertisements marketing deals, whether you know they're uh there um

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Speaker 1: uh large synchronization uses or um, you know the Whitney

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Speaker 1: Houston biographical film or historically like uh you know, a

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Speaker 1: lottery game or a slot machine or uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: many of the brand deals that we do, we put

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Speaker 1: them up on the board. And we started this because

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Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that during our marketing meetings

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Speaker 1: every Wednesday, the staff would be able to look at

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper, in this case, a very large

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Speaker 1: wall in our office and say, oh, you know what,

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Speaker 1: there's not enough activity on Tommy Shaw, where there's not

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Speaker 1: enough our activity on Bob Marley, where there's not enough

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Speaker 1: activity on you know, def Leopard or Aliving in John

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Speaker 1: or air Supply or and Boys to and and so

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Speaker 1: you'd see that on the wall, and so people would

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Speaker 1: not want to come into the marketing meeting and and

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Speaker 1: have me say hey, so and so, you know what

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Speaker 1: is going on with this artist? You haven't delivered. So

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Speaker 1: you know, we'll race it every once in a while

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Speaker 1: and we'll start over again. We haven't erased it since

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Speaker 1: covid UM. You know this is uh so you know,

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Speaker 1: uh we we there weren't. There wasn't a lot of

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Speaker 1: activity coming inside the office, but you know we're now

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Speaker 1: you know, keeping it um. You know, very current UM.

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Speaker 1: And this on an todo in America UM. And uh

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Speaker 1: you know Jim Blossoms and know this is this is

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Speaker 1: amazing because the names he's leaving off. Let's see James Brown, Burke, Backrack,

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Speaker 1: you mentioned, Bob Marley, Smokey Robinson, Uh, you know Bing Crosby,

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Speaker 1: you know, all the way to jam and Lewis UM

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Speaker 1: the production songwriting team uh and Plainlight White t S

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Speaker 1: and and you know it's really really all over the

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Speaker 1: map up and well there's one common thread that the

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Speaker 1: common thread is that we are in the icon and

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Speaker 1: legend business and we want to partner with artists and

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Speaker 1: and buy into um into incredible assets that we believe

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Speaker 1: we can grow and we can add value to. If

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Speaker 1: we can't add value, we don't believe that we can

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Speaker 1: grow the income stream. It's really hard for us to

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Speaker 1: want to uh to get into business with an artist

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Speaker 1: because we feel like we have to deliver when we

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Speaker 1: get into business. It's not you know, we don't want to.

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Speaker 1: We're not going away. We are partnering with these artists

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Speaker 1: for very long time. They're entrusting with us their babies,

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Speaker 1: they're entrusting with us their legacy, and we need to deliver.

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Speaker 1: And look, there are two reasons why we want to deliver.

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Speaker 1: A Certainly, financially, it makes sense for us and our

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Speaker 1: partners to grow our incomestreame and deliver. But as importantly,

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Speaker 1: our arts are our best references. If we're keeping our

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Speaker 1: artists happy, Um, it means that somebody can give Paul

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Speaker 1: Anko a call, or somebody can give Pat Houston, who

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Speaker 1: uh you know runs the Whitney uson a Stata call

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Speaker 1: where they can give any one of a number of artists,

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Speaker 1: Smokey Robinson, the Bob Marley family. Um, you know, we're

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Speaker 1: delivering for all of these partners, and so they are

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Speaker 1: our best references. Now, one thing I'll point out, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say which artists I'm reading off, but

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Speaker 1: like the way that this board is reading. Uh, there's

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Speaker 1: an artist name, and then there are songs listed for

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Speaker 1: the most part, and next to them is a project

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Speaker 1: stand up to cancer, jan Commercial, Hawaii, Vohe, Gillette, Apple, TV, CBS, Paramount, TV, Cortex, etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: Lots of that. Now, in the nine nineties, this would

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Speaker 1: have gotten you Homer and the music. Okay, things haven't changed, Okay,

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Speaker 1: they certainly have now. Another thing that I've often heard

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Speaker 1: you say makes you differ different is the fact that

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Speaker 1: none of those things are up there without the artist knowledge, consent,

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Speaker 1: or just like, yeah, sure, we will not do creative

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Speaker 1: that doesn't involve the artist or the airs or representatives.

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Speaker 1: If the artist isn't alive or available without them signing off,

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Speaker 1: we will not go ahead and initiate these opportunities. It

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Speaker 1: is really important that an artist sees us as a

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Speaker 1: true partner. And you can't be a true partner if

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Speaker 1: you're a company going out and using an artists creative

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Speaker 1: without their sign up. And we just don't do that. Well,

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Speaker 1: And that was sort of The big lesson for that

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Speaker 1: actually came in the nineties with Michael Jackson licensing The

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Speaker 1: Beatles Revolution for a Nike Yet. I mean that was

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Speaker 1: sort of like the big bang of what not to

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Speaker 1: do in isasing marketing. That is true. Yeah, that doesn't

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Speaker 1: happen here. Yeah, um no, okay, Um. Before because I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about your background a little bit, one

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Speaker 1: thing I will say that the I think perhaps the

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Speaker 1: most recent deal that was made public anyway was the

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Speaker 1: Ramones deal, and that really struck me because number one,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty much the first punk rock deal of its

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Speaker 1: kind using a punk rock catalog and an enormously iconic

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Speaker 1: one as well. And also, um, you know, yes, it

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Speaker 1: was one fourth of all of their songwriting and their earnings,

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Speaker 1: but ten million dollars and you know, I've heard I've

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Speaker 1: heard that things like Swedish House Mafia and things like

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Speaker 1: that went for upwards of millions. But with the Ramans,

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Speaker 1: you have, uh is a blitz Creek prop Hey, hell

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Speaker 1: let's go. Yeah. I mean that song is already been

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Speaker 1: licensed all over the place. It's been in everything from

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Speaker 1: kids ads, you hear it in stadiums everywhere. Um, that

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Speaker 1: was a very good deal. Larry. You know, here, here's

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Speaker 1: the thing. It's it's it's very simple. Swedish Mafia has

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Speaker 1: a lot of new music in the catalog, and you know,

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Speaker 1: it's very hard to outmarket the decline in earnings when

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Speaker 1: songs come off the radio, they stream less, etcetera. They

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Speaker 1: sink less in general because their momon current with artists

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Speaker 1: like the Ramans, there is a very very historically stable

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Speaker 1: income stream. And so if you put a little elbow

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Speaker 1: grease in and you have the right staff and you

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Speaker 1: have the right infrastructure, you can create opportunities to raise

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Speaker 1: that income stream. What we don't like to do is

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Speaker 1: fight against declaiming curve in an income stream. So we're

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Speaker 1: not in the new artist business in that type of

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Speaker 1: way the way some of our competitors are when they're

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Speaker 1: buying new catalogs. I saw somebody just recently bought um,

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Speaker 1: you know, the Blake Shelton catal. Love Blake Shelton, great music,

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Speaker 1: great guy, you know, incredible exposure on the voice. But

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Speaker 1: you know that's an example of how are you going

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Speaker 1: to outmarket the fall of those new earnings. I just

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Speaker 1: don't know how to do that. And so what we

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Speaker 1: do and the reason our investors are so happy and

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Speaker 1: our artists are so happy. We are sticking focused to

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Speaker 1: those artists that we can significantly impact in a positive way.

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Speaker 1: The infustry. Do you have to wait for that decline?

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Speaker 1: You know, the sort of the and it's you can't

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Speaker 1: even really put a time limit on, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: just like the currency has to fall off. It's almost

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Speaker 1: like they move into marriage, art having to judge his carriage.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly right, now, that's exactly what we do. You know,

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Speaker 1: whether again you know Toto America, Devo, Donny Hathaway, Leo

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Speaker 1: Say or Leon Russell, Um, David Rose. People on your

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Speaker 1: podcast may not know the great Glenn Gould. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: those are the things that really excite us. You know,

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Speaker 1: Teddy Pendegrast we just recently did um. You know, Luther Vandross.

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Speaker 1: That is our sweet spot and that's what we concentrate

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Speaker 1: on again. You know, we we've about this before. Um.

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Speaker 1: We have somewhere now between fifty and sixty thousand copyrights.

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Speaker 1: Our competitors have you know, three million, four million, two million.

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Speaker 1: I don't by the way, our competitors are all good,

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Speaker 1: but you can't possibly market three or four million copyrights,

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Speaker 1: you can't. We can market fifty to sixty thousand copyrights

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Speaker 1: and tell an artist they're going to be a priority.

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Speaker 1: Um Glenn Gould, the classical pianist. Yeah, yeah, How how

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Speaker 1: do you market that? What do you what do you

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Speaker 1: do with that? Well, great question. First of all, we

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Speaker 1: always start with low hanging fruit. And for Glenn Gold,

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Speaker 1: he was an artist where there was there was an

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Speaker 1: exceptional team around him. Steve Posen was his um, was

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Speaker 1: his trustee. Faith Perkins was you know, a consultant working

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Speaker 1: for the trust that was helping market Glenn Gould. It

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Speaker 1: was very at all digital presence when we bought into

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Speaker 1: the estate and partner with the estate. So so one

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Speaker 1: of the things that we've done over the over the years,

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Speaker 1: over the last four years is we have dramatically increased

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Speaker 1: the eyeballs he now you know, he has a Twitter

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Speaker 1: account and Instagram account, of Facebook, and we are making

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Speaker 1: social media a very very big priority, which leads to

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Speaker 1: more streams, It leads to more opportunities, it leads to

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Speaker 1: brand opportunities. We are we funded the development of a

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Speaker 1: Glen Gold biographical film, so we're we're we've funded the script,

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Speaker 1: we're packaging it um, We've got a director, we've we've

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Speaker 1: you know, we've we've gotten us almost final version of

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Speaker 1: the script. We're producing it in house. We're gonna have

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Speaker 1: a Glenn Goal biographical film over the next few years.

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Speaker 1: That you know, those are things that dramatically impact recognition,

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Speaker 1: growth and brand opportunity, and you don't get pushed back

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Speaker 1: from the classical music community like grand Girl Twitter. I'll

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Speaker 1: call yeah, but you know, you know, you have to

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Speaker 1: go where people are right and uh, you know people

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Speaker 1: are online. I mean, you know, you know my eighties,

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Speaker 1: something in your old parents are online. Now you're listening

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Speaker 1: the Strictly Business or Primary Wave founder and CEO Larry Misstell,

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Welcome back to Stripting Business with

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Speaker 1: Primary Wave founder and CEO Larry miss Stell. You've started

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Speaker 1: Primary Wave in two thousand six. Had you worked in

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Speaker 1: publishing before, because you know, I mean, these are labeled jobs.

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Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna be completely honest with you, Like

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Speaker 1: every other record executive in the world at the time,

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Speaker 1: everybody knew it what publishing meant. Virtually no record executive

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Speaker 1: ever really understands what publishing And I have to say

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Speaker 1: that I really had no idea what music publishing was

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Speaker 1: until I bought the Kirk Cobain Catalog and the MGM

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Speaker 1: United Artists Catalog back in two thousand four to start

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Speaker 1: the company. And I quickly went to boot camp, you know,

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Speaker 1: the first six or seven months, and I realized, Wow,

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Speaker 1: this is a much better business than the recorded music business. Well,

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Speaker 1: especially because the recorded music business was tanking by this yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. It was going you know, it was like

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Speaker 1: it was going down twenty percent a year. And you know,

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Speaker 1: and because of our strategy of you know, marketing and

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Speaker 1: getting behind these artists were buying, we were growing our

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Speaker 1: income stream at a time when you know, most music

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Speaker 1: companies or the client. But it took me, you know,

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Speaker 1: it took me a moment to figure out the nuances

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Speaker 1: of publishing because it's much more intricate and much more

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Speaker 1: nuanced than than the record business. Can you say what

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Speaker 1: some of those lessons were and how you brought and

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Speaker 1: how you might have learned them working with the Critica

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Speaker 1: Band Catalog. Well, Well, first of all, when you're a

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Speaker 1: record executive and you're running labels, you're making money on

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Speaker 1: at the time, on physical sales of c d s, right,

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Speaker 1: you know, every once in a while you made some

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Speaker 1: money on vinyl, but when you're a publisher, half of

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Speaker 1: your income comes from songs in the radio, songs on TV, UM,

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Speaker 1: songs and movies UM. And you know, synchronization use performance

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Speaker 1: income and synchronization used. So as a polisher, I very

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Speaker 1: quickly found out that that if you're going to be

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Speaker 1: a real marketeer in publishing, you can't just be a

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Speaker 1: licensing company. You need to be an aggressive synchronization company

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Speaker 1: as well as an aggressive marketing company as well as

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Speaker 1: an aggressive brand company. That that was not the case

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Speaker 1: in the publishing space. You know when I when I started,

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Speaker 1: people thought we were crazy when I said we have

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Speaker 1: a head of branding. We came in as a very

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Speaker 1: transformative UM approach and vision to publishing, which was basically,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna let you guys do all the administration. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna go out and make movies, We're gonna go out

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Speaker 1: and create um, you know, video games. We're going to

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Speaker 1: go out and do deals with slot machine companies and

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Speaker 1: lottery game companies. And there was very unusual in time.

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Speaker 1: You know, we the first to put lyrics on the

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Speaker 1: side of sneakers with you know, the Kirk Bang convert sneakers. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, we were the first to do a lot

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Speaker 1: of these really were easy marketing things, and that's how

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Speaker 1: we built our branding. What made you see that opportunity

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Speaker 1: you sort of said it was the Cobain catalog was

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Speaker 1: the one deal you did where you were just like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, this is great. Well, well was before that?

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Speaker 1: You know, when uh, you know, when you're gonna buy

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Speaker 1: these works of art, it's not an insignificant amount of money.

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Speaker 1: You have to you have to start with a lot

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Speaker 1: of money. And so I had to go out and

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Speaker 1: raise uh you know, I think it was fifty or

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Speaker 1: sixty million dollars to start the company, to buy the

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Speaker 1: Cobain catalog and to buy the MGM you a catalog,

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Speaker 1: and to buy a few of these catalogs that we

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Speaker 1: started with. But I had seen as I was leaving

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Speaker 1: virgin Um and getting ready to start Primary way that

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Speaker 1: I had to come up with a reason why we

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Speaker 1: were different than everybody else. Why were we going to

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Speaker 1: be successful? What were we were going to do differently

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Speaker 1: than than Universal and at the time E M, I

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Speaker 1: and BMG and Warner Chapel, what why were we going

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Speaker 1: to have success when we were starting up with nothing,

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Speaker 1: I mean literally nothing, right, I had a desk and um,

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Speaker 1: one of my friends offices, you know, we had one desk.

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Speaker 1: We had two people justin and I basically and you

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Speaker 1: know what we're going to do differently, And and what

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Speaker 1: we were going to do differently was actually create some

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Speaker 1: value in the music publishing space by marketing the brand

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Speaker 1: of the artist. It was a very foreign concept to

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Speaker 1: publishers because what does branding have to do with publishing? Right?

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Speaker 1: But what the basic sleepy publishing business was was make

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Speaker 1: sure you're collecting everything out there that's out there to collect.

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Speaker 1: And I just thought, you know that's that's anybody can

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Speaker 1: do that. That's and by the way, it's borings hell,

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Speaker 1: what value does that bring to your artists? So you

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Speaker 1: know it is so passive, it's so you are increasing

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Speaker 1: the value of these cataracts. But remember I came from

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Speaker 1: a label, right, And my job at a label was

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Speaker 1: to come up as a label executive, come up with

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Speaker 1: ways too great new artists. How do you do that?

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Speaker 1: You don't do it by sitting back and being passive.

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Speaker 1: You gotta be aggressive. You gotta get songs in the radio,

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Speaker 1: you've gotta get pressed, you've gotta get synchronization opportunity, you

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Speaker 1: gotta gotta come up with ways to break an act.

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Speaker 1: So what we said was, look, we're gonna start a

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Speaker 1: publishing company. We're gonna start buying these incredible, iconic artists

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Speaker 1: that were in the special markets divisions of these labels, right,

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Speaker 1: they weren't even the frontline label anywhere, and we're going

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Speaker 1: to put a frontline label mentality into the publishing space.

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Speaker 1: And we pissed everyone else, and now everyone's doing they're

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Speaker 1: trying to sixteen years later. Was actually started about to

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Speaker 1: three years ago. It started to become the mainstream of

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Speaker 1: the business. Right that everyone is trying to get into

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Speaker 1: the space. Everyone that has a relationship thinks that they

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Speaker 1: can go out and buy music publishing rights, and they're

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Speaker 1: they're probably right. If somebody offers enough money, which some

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Speaker 1: people have, um maybe an artist would consider self. But

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Speaker 1: the reality is that two artists, it's more than just money.

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Speaker 1: That certainly the money has to be right, but an

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Speaker 1: artist wants to know that their legacy is going to

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Speaker 1: be taken care of. Fast forward to today, we've been

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Speaker 1: through roughly of four or five year boom in music catalogs,

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Speaker 1: everything from publishing, the producer points and and all that.

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Speaker 1: Interest rates have gone up. Uh, people are concerned about

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Speaker 1: a recession. You just did a two billion dollar deal.

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Speaker 1: You clearly are not that concerned about those things, and

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Speaker 1: and about the marker cooling off necessarily. Yeah, well, look,

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Speaker 1: here's the I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why.

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Speaker 1: I'm not concerned overall for our company. I'm concerned a

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Speaker 1: little bit for the business in general. From this perspective

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Speaker 1: that a lot of our competitors have promised investors a

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Speaker 1: certain dividend or or public companies have promised a certain

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Speaker 1: dividend to their investors. And if you're promising an investor,

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Speaker 1: you know, a five percent dividend or a six percent dividend,

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Speaker 1: and you're buying at multiples which are call it twenty

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Speaker 1: four times twenty five times, which a lot of these

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Speaker 1: people out there are buying. Um, we typically do not

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Speaker 1: do that. But if you're promising somebody a five percent

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Speaker 1: dividend and you're buying it twenty four twenty five times,

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Speaker 1: which is a four percent cash and cash return, you're

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Speaker 1: already behind your dividend. Pay it right. And if you

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Speaker 1: don't have a growth strategy. If you don't have a

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Speaker 1: strategy to actually make that income stream increase, that's not

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Speaker 1: a long lived UM plan, right. So I you know,

427
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: we we've been We've been delivering UM fantastic returns to

428
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: our investors, and we have significantly grown the income streams

429
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:33,640
Speaker 1: of most of our catalogs. And I think that's why

430
00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:38,680
Speaker 1: Brookfield was so interested in coming into business with us

431
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:42,000
Speaker 1: and putting a massive amount of money behind us. I mean,

432
00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: you know, two billion dollars is not an insignificant song.

433
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 1: Something that I've noticed about a lot of the catalogs

434
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: that you have partnered with. UM, don't necessarily get a law. Uh.

435
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: You know, the James Brown estate has been famously fractured.

436
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: Just the Princess Stay has issues and he died intestate

437
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 1: that means without a will in case you didn't know,

438
00:28:06,400 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 1: very complicated situations to navigate, especially for someone who has

439
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 1: forty deals in the works. How do you divide up

440
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 1: your time? And do you have any background in psychology? Well?

441
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: You know that I would say you want to come

442
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:23,399
Speaker 1: into the music business, the first thing you should do

443
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: is get a psychology degree, right, that will be very useful. UM,

444
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:30,120
Speaker 1: you can't come in and and be in the business

445
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 1: that we all are in unless you were prepared for,

446
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 1: um for a little bit of chaos and a and

447
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: a little bit of craziness, which we all deal with.

448
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:43,800
Speaker 1: I'm sure you deal with you know, every single debt. UM.

449
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 1: And it is true that many bands do not get

450
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: along with each other. UM, and we have had over

451
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: the years. Are fair share. But look, the reality is that, UM,

452
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: we can also come in and be you know, a peacemaker.

453
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: We can we can be UM you know, a company

454
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 1: that aligns people that may not have been aligned in

455
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: the past. And uh, in many instances we've done that. UM.

456
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 1: You know, UH, and we love to partner so UM.

457
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,160
Speaker 1: You know, because of that philosophy, I think artists appreciate that,

458
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: and we've been able to get a lot of things

459
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: done then I think other companies have not been able

460
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: to get done. I mean, the Princess State was a

461
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: monumentally difficult deal. I mean, you know, we don't even

462
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 1: have enough time to go in to all of the

463
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: intricacies that happened. But look, we we came in many

464
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: years ago when there was a lot of risk, and

465
00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: we bailed out three of the six airs UM from

466
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:57,040
Speaker 1: a major major issue. They had taken out uh you know,

467
00:29:57,240 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 1: they had taken out some debt if um you know,

468
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: with at our reasonably high interest rate, and couldn't monsters

469
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: tax bill as well. Right, it was a very big

470
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,479
Speaker 1: tax bill on the estate. UM. And we ended up

471
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: doing a deal where we were able to help um,

472
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 1: you know, three of the six airs out to take

473
00:30:19,240 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: them out of difficulty. We partnered with them and over

474
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: the years up we were there to help them monetize

475
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: their interests when they wanted to. And you know, so

476
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: now we own state. Uh, we're working UM. You know,

477
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 1: we now have a much much better relationship with the

478
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: other three heirs and their advisors and we're all working

479
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: together to organize the estate and and grow Prince's legacy.

480
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,840
Speaker 1: We've been listening to strictly business. Primary Way founder and

481
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 1: CEO Larry Mustel. Tune in next week. Anything Again