Armada Music, Armin Van Buuren‘s music label, just announced the launch of investment company BEAT Music, with plans to spend $100 million on M&A in its first two years. BEAT, which stands for “Best Ever Acquired Tracks,” has already announced two acquisitions. As a matter of fact, it acquired the master recording rights of Detroit techno legend Kevin Saunderson‘s KMS Records and Russian DJ ARTY.
Financing for BEAT Music will come from Pinnacle Financial, a Nashville-based financial services firm with $42 billion in assets as of the end of 2022. In the longer run, Armada, which reports generating 1 billion streams per month, said in a statement that it plans for BEAT to grow its investment portfolio to at least $500 million. CEO Maykel Piron commented on the news in the statement.
“BEAT is in a unique position to add relevance to those tracks through creative additions, best practices in exploitation setup, and marketing methods and communication channels within the bigger (Armada) organization.”
Obviously, the goal here for BEAT is to focus on EDM. Music labels launched many funds in the past two years for genres like pop, indie, and Latin music, but the dance industry did not see the same growth. EDM alone is a $9.5 billion market opportunity, growing to more than $20 billion in the next decade, according to a report by research firm Future Market Insights.
BEAT’s arrival comes amidst a revival of music M&A activity in the past several months. After a red-hot 2021, activity slowed down in 2022, which some industry observers blamed on a global spike in interest rates. BEAT noted in its announcement Thursday (April 20) that part of what had spurred its creation was the fact that Piron had been “pursued by numerous investors as part of the rapidly growing appetite for music catalogs”.
Stay tuned for more news!
