Downtown Music has launched a new division: Downtown Royalties & Financial Services (DR&FS).
Downtown Music, the global services arm of Downtown Music Holdings, said the new initiative expands the company’s efforts to expand royalty and financial services for its artists, labels and businesses.
This follows Downtown’s acquisition of royalty processing platform Curve Style Systems in January 2023.
To lead the new division, Downtown appointed Curve founder Tom Allen as president of Downtown Royalties & Financial Services.
Allen will report to David Driessen, Chief Commercial Officer of Downtown Music.
Richard Leach, Curve’s current general manager, will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of the Curve platform and reporting to Allen as Curve’s managing director.
Downtown said the new department will focus on three core activities, including Royalty processing (Powered by Curve Platform), royalties Accounting Serveand Payment.
Through Curve, Downtown Royalties & Financial Services has partnered with more than 1,000 Record labels and publishers around the world, including Domino, Defected, Epitaph, Mad Decent, Armada, Cloud9, Demon Music, Big Machine and more.
Downtown says that across all of its services, it currently supports more than 4000000 Artists in 150 countries and 5,000 commercial clients, they have collectively created more than 1.5 trillion It will be available on major streaming platforms in 2023.
Downtown said the goal of the new Royalty and Financial Services division is to “provide faster and simpler copyright services, accounting and payments to its more than 5,000 commercial clients and 4 million artist relationships.”
“Tom’s leadership at Curve has raised the industry standard for royalty management and financial services. His expertise will be vital as he leads this new division in the city centre.
David Driessen, Downtown Music
David Driessen, Chief Commercial Officer of Downtown Music, said: “Downtown Royalty and Financial Services is both committed to extending our core offering into deeper services and solving customers’ payment issues, while also simplifying financial complexities for artists and businesses in the industry. Problems faced every day.
“Tom’s leadership at Curve has raised the industry standard for royalty management and financial services. His expertise will be vital as he leads this new division in the city centre.
“We are committed to expanding our full range of services to efficiently report and disburse their revenue, ensuring every stream is accounted for.”
Tom Allen, Downtown Royalty and Financial Services
“Curve customers will generate hundreds of billions of streams in 2023 alone on major streaming platforms,” said Tom Allen, President of Downtown Royalties and Financial Services.
“We are committed to expanding our full range of services to efficiently report and disburse their revenue, ensuring every stream is accounted for.
“Downtown Royalties and Financial Services is the next phase of our vision, including our services and payments divisions, and although I will continue to oversee Curve, it feels great to be able to step away from the day-to-day management and development of Curve.” platform.
In early 2021, Downtown sold the 145,000 rights it owned to Concord for approx. $400 million As part of a strategy of becoming a partner to copyright holders rather than owning the copyright itself.
A boom in services-focused mergers and acquisitions over the past five years is also central to the plan. For example, in 2019, Downtown spent $200 million to acquire AVL Digital Group and its portfolio of services for independent artists such as distribution platform CD Baby.
Downtown has furthered its services-focused M&A activity with the acquisition of Amsterdam-based B2B technology and services company FUGA in 2020 and Curve Royale Systems last January.
Last week, we reported elsewhere at Downtown Music that the company had secured another $500 million in credit capacity from Bank of America to expand its services to independent artists and labels.
Downtown said it initially partnered with Bank of America in 2022 to provide a $200 million credit line that provided artists and rights holders with upfront payments in exchange for “a short-term share of future royalties.”
Last month, Pieter van Rijn was appointed CEO of Downtown Music, reporting to Andrew Bergman, CEO of Downtown Music Holdings.
Today, through its operations, Downtown Music Holdings claims to be the largest independent service provider in the world.
Sources told MBW that the company’s revenue this year is expected to reach $900 million.global music business
