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For some reason, music catalogs have been getting very hot in recent weeks.
Former Fleetwood Mac frontman Stevie Nicks reportedly sold an 80% stake in their music list for about $ 100 million in December. Shamrock Capital Advisors, meanwhile, acquired Taylor Swift’s first recording catalog for around $ 300 million. Then Bob Dylan’s catalog of songs was sold to Universal Music Group for an estimated $ 300 million.
So what gives? My colleague, Geoff Colvin, has the fascinating answer. In part, owning the music rights themselves has become increasingly important due to the explosion of music streaming services like Spotify. The values ​​of these catalogs have also exploded as music has become a recession-proof bet, making it a good time to sell. Then there’s the big T word. No, not Taylor Swift. The taxes.
President-elect Joe Biden has proposed taxing capital gains for those with income over $ 400,000 at a much higher rate. If Democrats won both Senate seats in Georgia, such a tax change might be plausible. Which means potentially, much higher taxes for deals with artists like Dylan and Nicks and for M&A deals in general.
“Bottom line: The tax on a deal like Dylan’s could almost double if it doesn’t get done before New Years Eve.” I have a number of clients who were trying to make deals before the first of the year. year because they feared the new administration would put pressure on its tax program, ” says Josh Escovedo, a lawyer whose specialties at law firm Weintraub Tobin include copyright and trademark issues. “It is entirely possible” that these considerations may have influenced Dylan’s agreement, he notes. ” Read more.
LAWN CARE STARTUP RECEIVES FUNDING: Love them or hate them, there are a lot of lawns in America (so much in fact that there are many, many meta-pieces examining the historical, psychological, and socio-economic dynamics of the the love of the country for lawns). Sunday, a startup selling by subscription eco-friendly lawn care products raised $ 19 million in Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital and with participation from Tusk Ventures and Forerunner Ventures. This caught my attention for several reasons: First, the company says it is growing much faster than expected, in part due to the pandemic accelerating the shift from cities to suburbs. And while many direct-to-consumer brands have focused on targeting city consumers, Sunday, based in Boulder, Colorado, targets, because of its business, suburbs with customers concentrated in central America. Also on Sunday, Americans deposit more pesticides in their own yards each year than factory farms. Read more.
BET ON THE RISE OF MEN’S TAPISERIE: As Sunday emphasizes the massive size of its potential market (all lawns across the country), Iconiq, the multi-family company with clients including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, led a $ 60 million C-Series funding round dollars into Squire Technologies, a company with payments and reservation software specifically for hair salons. The logic is that by targeting the very specific needs of the currently cash-heavy barber industry, the business can tap into very loyal customers and grow further – for example in customer relationship software or even insurance – from so in the end, just by developing product and functionality, “we’re going to need fewer customers to build a really massive business,” Songe LaRon, CEO of Squire, told me. Read the full story here.AND DO NOT FORGET: America’s Largest Food Delivery Company DoorDash Expected To List On The New York Stock Exchange After Raising Sale Of Shares To High Evaluation that the company had previously announced. The company sold shares at $ 102 each, valuing the company at around $ 32.4 billion, or roughly $ 38.7 billion on a fully diluted basis.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
E-mail: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
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