Lyric Capital Closes Second Music Royalty Fund to the Tune of $800M

Music-focused private equity firm Lyric Capital Group and its music publishing operation Spirit Music Group have raised $410 million in new capital to buy music copyrights. Additional debt financing brings the total available to over $800 million.

Lyric’s latest fundraise follows its $500 million strategic alliance with Northleaf Capital in October 2021. Since that deal, Northleaf has used Spirit’s music assets to support the raise of a $303.8 million bond offering.

Jon Singer, Lyric co-founder and managing partner and Chairman of Spirit, touted the funding and emphasized that his companies possess “a robust pipeline of proprietary opportunities.”

“I couldn’t be more excited about completing our latest fundraise with the participation of existing and new investors which validates our unique and collaborative approach to acquiring high-quality assets from recording artists and songwriters,” said Singer.

Lyric’s new $800 million raise marks the latest evidence that the music rights acquisition space is blaring and follows a string of recent big-money deals and investments.

Last month, Los Angeles-based investment company Shamrock Capital, best known for buying the master rights to Taylor Swift’s first six studio albums from Big Machine, raised more than $600 million in commitments for its third equity fund.

Lyric Capital was founded in 2019 by Singer and Ross Cameron to orchestrate a management buyout of the Spirit Music Group. Through Spirit it now owns more than 100,000 song and recording copyrights, including recordings by Swift, Ed Sheeran, Jay-Z, Madonna, Elvis Presley, Eminem, Tom Petty, Frank Sinatra and more.

Eaton Partners served as the exclusive placement agent and Ropes & Gray LLP served as legal counsel. Truist (formerly SunTrust) and Pinnacle were co-leads on the debt syndication for Lyric Capital Group.