Downtown Acquires Curve Royalty Systems
The world’s leading music services provider, Downtown Music Holdings (Downtown℠), announced today that it has acquired Curve Royalty Systems (Curve).
Founded in 2019 by Tom Allen, Richard Leach and Ray Bush, all veterans of internationally recognized music companies Cooking Vinyl, Essential Music and ADA, Curve is the preeminent royalty processing platform built to deal with the scale and demand of the modern digital music industry.
Curve is the latest in a series of strategic acquisitions that Downtown has made in recent years. In addition to Curve, the group acquired a series of companies, including FUGA, CD Baby and all its subsidiaries. Additional investments in Beatbread, Vampr and other creator-led music companies have added to the commitment by Downtown to support all profiles of businesses in the music ecosystem.
Curve will continue to provide royalty services to its extensive client base while integrating with the suite of distribution and monetization capabilities that operate across Downtown Music, the company division focused on the professional music industry. As part of a broader enterprise, Curve, its clients and partners will benefit from expanded resources, infrastructure, and global scale to more quickly bring to market its best-in-class royalty processing platform.
“Over the course of our discussions, it became apparent that we had a shared vision - Downtown provides real value for their customers and focuses on providing best-in-class products and services. That’s exactly what we’ve tried to achieve with Curve. So, when the opportunity came to work together, we knew this was a perfect fit for our team and client base. We know the future of Curve is in safe hands with Downtown, and we’re super excited to see what we can build together.” Said Curve co-founder Tom Allen.
In an increasingly complex music industry, royalty accounting services are an essential element in fulfilling the true needs of distribution, label services, publishing and other client services capabilities. With a modular and flexible offering designed for the needs of the modern music rights company, Curve serves over 1000 labels and publishers worldwide and has processed nearly $1bn of revenue across 2.3bn lines of data in 2022 alone.
Said Downtown CEO, Andrew Bergman: “For some time, we have been admirers of the technology and service quality that Tom and Richard have been building at Curve. As we got to know them and their team, it became ever more obvious that their dedication and forward-thinking vision were a great fit for Downtown. Accuracy, precision, timeliness, and innovation in royalty services are core to Downtown’s mission of supporting creators and the businesses that serve them. Welcoming the Curve team to Downtown is another important step in furtherance of our mission.”
Compatible with every possible data format and size, Curve has the ability to ingest an unlimited number of income statements each month, collating complex information from a variety of different distributors and sources and distilling it into bespoke reports. Curve is a complete royalties toolset for the global music industry. Since its inception Curve has processed nearly $4bn in revenue.
Pieter van Rijn, Downtown Music President says: “In Downtown Music, we’ve combined innovative technology and industry-leading services to create an offering that empowers music businesses and their creators. Curve perfectly complements our mission to be the leading music industry platform and their past work speaks to their high standards and pioneering technology.”
Curve’s client base encompasses a variety of music recording and publishing businesses including Cooking Vinyl Group, the Domino Recording Company, Hospital Records/Songs in the Key of Knife, Epitaph Records, Warp Records, Ingrooves, Mad Decent, MRC, Royalty Solutions Corp., Cal Financial, Alta Fonte and many more.
Curve was advised on the transaction by Casini Corporate Finance with legal counsel from Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe. Downtown was advised by YMU Business Management with legal counsel from Osborne Clark.
