to launch BMG with three employees and the rights to a few recordings that were held back when the parent company sold its music business to Sony. Since then, the new Bertelsmann Music Group has grown to more than 850 staffers -- and become the fourth-biggest recorded music and publishing company in terms of revenue, right behind the three major labels.
Masuch, 64, got his start in music as the lead singer of the new wave band The Ramblers; he then moved to the executive side, working with Nena early in her career and eventually rising to managing director and senior vp overseeing Germany, Switzerland and Austria in BMG Music Publishing's first incarnation.
The U.S. will always be around 40%-50% of our music revenue. Our investment priorities over the next years will be building repertoire in the U.S. and then creating the pipelines in the other territories to deal with it.Our next focus will be South America, because it's a very locally driven market, so there's much more room for international repertoire.
During the last 10 years you've made over 100 acquisitions. What is your acquisition strategy as you switch toward more organic development? We would like to do acquisitions, but the reality is that the prices for publishing catalogs are beyond what makes sense. Why should I pay multiples [of net publisher's share, the standard industry measure of valuation] of 15, 16, 17 times when what's probably the biggest part of publishing revenue -- public performance royalties -- we would be happy to see grow by 1%-1.
Most of the recording deals you offer include a fairly high revenue split, with the rights to the master eventually reverting to the artist. Is that a sustainable business model?
Wow
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