 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | 1974 |
| Successor | Concord |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, New York, Nashville, Tennessee, London, United Kingdom, Berlin, Germany, Miami, Florida, |
| Owner | Woodcreek Capital |
Number of employees | 24 |
| Website | www |
The Bicycle Music Company was a music publishing company founded independently, and after growing for a number of years was merged with Concord Music Group in 2015. As of 2010, it owned or administered over 12,000 works from songwriters.
The Bicycle Music Company was founded in 1974 by music publishing executive David Rosner, veteran of the CBS publishing division April/Blackwood Music and longtime publishing representative to singer-songwriter Neil Diamond. One of the company's early international hits was “Let Your Love Flow,” written by Neil Diamond's guitar technician, Larry E. Williams. Later, Rosner's son, Jonathan, joined Bicycle Music and expanded the company's contemporary writer relationships. [1]
In 2005, Rosner sold Bicycle Music to Clear Channel Entertainment and the latter's newly formed music rights acquisition company Sound Investors, LLC, owned by Clear Channel Entertainment executive Stephen Smith. [2] Concord's Chief Publishing Executive, Jake Wisely, joined the management team at the closing of the acquisition. [3] By the end of that year, following Clear Channel's decision to divest significant entertainment assets and spin off the balance of its holdings into a separately traded public company called Live Nation, Smith became the company's sole owner. [1]
A year later, Sound Investors contributed its interest in Bicycle to a new rights management partnership with Wood Creek Capital Management. By this time, Bicycle oversaw the publishing concerns of a catalog including Marvin Hamlisch, [4] Glen Ballard (recorded by Michael Jackson [5] and Alanis Morissette), [6] and many others.
By 2010, Bicycle Music had purchased additional song catalogs including artists Cyndi Lauper, Tammy Wynette, Ozomatli, Marshall Goodman (co-wrote for Sublime and Long Beach All-Stars), Dwight Yoakam, Montell Jordan, and more. [1] in April 2010, Bicycle acquired part of the TVT Records catalogue, including Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails. [7]
In October 2013, The Bicycle Music Company acquired the catalogue of Wind-Up Records and partnered with Concord Music Group to distribute the catalogue. [8] Concord and Bicycle merged in April 2015, and Concord acquired the rest of Wind-Up in May 2015. [9]
Bicycle Music had completed over 100 publishing and master recording catalog deals by 2015. [10] That year, the Bicycle Music Company was merged with Concord Music Group to form the fully-integrated global music company called Concord Bicycle Music. [11]
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music company was formed as RCA/Ariola International in 1985 as a joint venture to combine the music label activities of RCA's RCA Records division and Bertelsmann's Ariola Records and its associated labels which include Arista Records. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent music publisher and the 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music, which established the German American Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008.
The Orchard is an American music and entertainment company, specializing in media distribution. It is a subsidiary of Sony Music, based in New York City. In 2019, the company sold off its film and television division, which was renamed 1091 Media.
Warner Music Group Corp. is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "big three" recording companies and the third-largest in the global music industry, after Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME). Formerly part of Time Warner, WMG was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 2005 until 2011, when it announced its privatization and sale to Access Industries. It later had its second IPO on Nasdaq in 2020, once again becoming a public company. With a multibillion-dollar annual turnover, WMG employs more than 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world.
TVT Records was an American record label founded by Steve Gottlieb. Over the course of its 24-year history, the label released 25 Gold, Platinum and Multi-Platinum releases. Its roster included Nine Inch Nails, Ja Rule, Lil Jon, Underworld, KMFDM, Gravity Kills, The KLF, The Baldwin Brothers, Sevendust, Nothingface, the Wellwater Conspiracy, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Holloways, The Cinematics, Buck-O-Nine, DJ Hurricane, Speech and Pitbull. The label had a triple platinum release with Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine, two double platinum releases by Lil Jon, and platinum releases by Snoop Dogg and Tha Eastsidaz, Dashboard Confessional, Default and Ying Yang Twins, as well as gold releases by Sevendust, Gravity Kills, and The Black Crowes and Jimmy Page. Additionally, TVT achieved a gold release in Germany and Sweden with The Connells, and scored platinum and gold records in Canada with Default. In 2008, it filed for bankruptcy.
Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was a primarily classical label at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
Sony Music Entertainment (SME), simply known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony. It is the recording division half of the Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.
Wind-up Entertainment was an American independent record label founded by Alan and Diana Meltzer in 1997. It was based in New York City and was distributed by BMG Distribution. Wind-up's best-selling artists worldwide were Creed and Evanescence.
Carlin America is an American music publisher with a catalog of over 100,000 titles. The company, created under its current name in 1995 by its founder Freddy Bienstock, is headquartered on East 38th Street in Manhattan. Bienstock died on September 29, 2009, after which Carlin Music was run by his children Robert and Caroline.
Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) is a North American music publishing company and is part of the Universal Music Group. It was formerly known as MCA Music Publishing until it merged with PolyGram.
Sony Music Publishing is the largest music publisher in the world, with over five million songs owned or administered as of end March 2021. US-based, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is itself owned by Sony Entertainment. The company was formed as Sony/ATV in 1995 by the merger of the original incarnation of Sony Music Publishing and ATV Music, which was owned by late entertainer Michael Jackson. Jackson had purchased ATV Music, which included the Lennon–McCartney song catalog, in 1985.
Concord Music Group was an American independent music company based in Beverly Hills, California, with worldwide distribution through Universal Music Group. The company specialized in recordings and music publishing. On April 1, 2015, Concord Music Group merged with Bicycle Music Company to become Concord Bicycle Music.
Castle Communications, also known as Castle Music, was a British independent record label and home video distributor founded in 1983 by Terry Shand, Cliff Dane, and Jon Beecher. Its video imprint was called Castle Vision. The label's production ceased in 2007, and its remaining rights are now chiefly vested in BMG Rights Management. Castle also operated a subsidiary label, Essential Records.
Razor & Tie was an American entertainment company that consisted of a record label and a music publishing company. It was established in 1990 by Craig Balsam and Cliff Chenfeld. Based in New York City, Razor & Tie releases were distributed by Universal Music Group.
Downtown Music Holdings is a global independent rights management and music services company. Based in New York City, it has been composed of five divisions: Downtown Music Services, Fuga, Songtrust, Adrev and CD Baby. All divisions live under the Downtown Music Holdings umbrella. In addition to its New York headquarters, Downtown has 20 offices across six continents including Los Angeles, London, Paris, Portland, Amsterdam, Johannesburg and Tokyo.
EMI Music Publishing Ltd. is a British multinational music publishing company headquartered in London, owned by parent company Sony Corporation of America.
BMG Rights Management GmbH is an international music company based in Berlin, Germany. It combines the activities of a music publisher and a record label.
Imagem Music Group was a Dutch music publisher. The company was founded in 2008 by the Dutch firm Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, one of the world's largest pension funds, in conjunction with the independent publisher and media company CP Masters BV. It began by acquiring European music publishing rights in a number of catalogues sold by Universal Music Publishing Group after its acquisition of BMG Music Publishing, such as Rondor UK, Zomba UK, 19 Music, 19 Songs, & the BBC catalog; the sale was worth 140 million euros. These were sold by Universal after the European Commission ordered the sell-off as a condition of its merger with BMG's publishing arm. This was followed by acquiring the world's leading classical music publishing company Boosey & Hawkes in 2008 and Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization in 2009.
Verse Music Group is an entertainment company founded by Curtis Frasca and Sabelle Breer with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. Since its inauguration in 2010, Verse has licensed 25,000 copyrights through the acquisition of catalogs and brands.
Round Hill Music is an American music publishing company founded in 2010 by Josh Gruss, Richard Rowe, and Neil Gillis. The company runs a music publishing division, a sync and royalty administration, a music production library business, a record label and label services division, and also a Nashville songwriter services group with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Nashville and London.
Concord is an independent creative rights company that develops, manages and acquires sound recordings, music publishing rights, theatrical performance rights and narrative content. It is a private company, funded by long-term institutional capital and members of Concord’s management team.