Hipgnosis Songs has acquired the music catalog of three-time Grammy winning producer and songwriter, RedOne, the company announced Thursday. While best known for his work on Lady Gaga’s early albums with songs like “Poker Face,” “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance” and “LoveGame,” he has also scored hits with with Jennifer Lopez, One Direction, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, Jason Derulo and Nicki Minaj.
He worked with Minaj on her smash singles “Starships” and “Pound the Alarm,” Enrique Iglesias on “I Like It,” Jennifer Lopez on “On the Floor” and “Dance Again,” Sean Kingston “Fire Burning” and Alexandra Burke on her U.K. hit “Start Without You.”
Hipgnosis has acquired 100% of RedOne’s songs and recorded-music interests including copyright, writer royalties and producer royalties in his catalogue comprising 337 songs.
RedOne was represented in the transaction by his manager Zack Dekkaki, lawyers Jonathan Koby and Joel Katz at Greenberg Traurig and Provident Financial Management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Hipgnosis Songs recently released its annual report, which showed its revenues soaring in its first full year of business, climbing to $81 million in the 12 month period ended in March 2020 from around $8.9 million in the preceding period. The firm, which has been on an unprecedented acquisition binge of hit songwriter and producer catalogs — been buying up catalogs by hitmakers ranging from Timbaland and Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart to Jack Antonoff and Jeff Bhasker — began trading on the London Stock Exchange in July of 2018. Between March 2019 and March 2020, the company spent nearly $700 million to acquire 42 catalogs.
In the report, cofounder and CEO Merck Mercuriades notes, “When compared with the three major song companies, we have achieved between 7% and 12.5% of their revenue on between 0.5% and 0.9% of their number of songs.” This is a result of the group’s highly selective investments, which he summarizes in the report thus: “All of our songs have a proven track record and we do not speculate on new songs regardless of the past performance of the songwriter, producer or artist. These proven hit Songs produce reliable, predictable and uncorrelated cash flows which are highly investible.”