Considering your background, I would refer to you as an institutional investor, even if Firebird is not using the traditional institutional investor approach of buying stakes in songs. You are acquiring stakes in companies.There are a few things that differentiate what we’re doing versus what most institutional capital flooding into music is doing. First, we’re not a fund.
The world of music, technology and direct to consumer commerce have evolved very substantially over the last five to 10 years; and the rate of change continues to accelerate. But many of the incumbent partners for artists have not caught up. We think there’s an opportunity to create a new kind of partner for artists, one that is fully aligned across everything they do. One that has sophisticated capabilities to create content and provide access to capital.
But you seem to have started in an institutional investment kind of way. There’s a form D filed with the SEC in November 2021 that says FirebirdThose numbers in the filing are probably stale. We’ve got access to over $1 billion of capital right now. We are not raising capital for funding. We’re raising capital for an operating vehicle.
Instead of silos we are looking at how intentional, coordinated, thoughtful marketing and brand building behind an artist can be optimized, which allows us to invest heavily in any one area that might benefit the whole ecosystem. So, you may invest in recording music to help activate the tour activity, which helps to sell the merch; and getting the right kind of synch can activate your streaming and make publishing much more valuable.
Tape Room is an example of where we will buy catalog. We purchased some of their existing catalogs; and then we created a go-forward joint venture with Ashley Gorley. Coran is also involved in that deal so it’s a three-way partnership to create songs and sign writers. What you won’t see is for us to go and compete with KKR or Primary Wave or anybody else and buy straight catalog without a frontline component, which means that we don’t have something we can build on.