Tesseract Music and Hawkeye Music Publishing have formed a strategic partnership to acquire and manage music-related intellectual property rights, mainly geared to artist and songwriter catalog acquisitions.
Tesseract Music, which apparently counts Tesseract Icons and Tesseract Collective Inc. as its sister companies, is an intellectual property management company founded by entrepreneur Richard Seet, a former principal with The Carlyle Group; and Charles Riotto, a former president of the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association (LIMA). Hawkeye Music Publishing was founded by Richard Stumpf, who has been senior vp at Cherry Lane Music, president of Imagem Music US and founder/CEO of Atlas Music, which was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019.
According to the announcement, the new partnership, which is operating under the name of Tesseract Music, has access to $50 million in equity capital and is in discussions with debt providers to supplement its funding. Moreover, the announcement says they already “are in conversations with music catalog owners to acquire their copyright libraries.”
Citing Stumpf’s expertise in managing music catalogs and increasing their enterprise value and Riotto’s expertise in licensing and merchandising, Seet said in a statement, “Through our partnership, we believe that we can acquire music catalogs successfully and increase their royalty payouts.” He added that the synergistic pairing of Stumpf’s and Riotto’s expertise will play “to the benefit of our artist collaborators. It is thus not a surprise that we have received the investor interest we have.”
While the announcement doesn’t name specific investors in Tesseract Music, it does note that in the past, Seet’s business endeavors have been backed by major strategic and/or private equity investors including United Business Media, Angelo Gordon & Co. and Brookfield.
Stumpf added that Riotto’s knowledge of the merchandising licensing business will fuel the partnership through plans to “maximize the value of NILs (Name, Image and Likeness).”
For his part, Riotto said in a statement, “Licensees are keen on brands with passionate followers and music artists are often defined by the fervor of their fans. From my discussion with licensees, they are very excited for the potential of NIL rights resulting from our partnership.”
In the past, Stumpf — who has worked with such artists as Van Halen, Quincy Jones, John Legend, the Black Eyed Peas, Ludacris, Mark Ronson, Swizz Beatz and the estates of Elvis Presley, John Denver and Sammy Cahn — has raised more than $58 million in private investment from family offices and venture capital, according to the announcement. More recently, he has been assisting such music investment firms as Round Hill Music Partners, Goldstate Music Capital, Harbour View Equity Partners and CatchPoint Rights Partners.
The announcement noted that Tesseract was advised by Clark Miller, who has previously held the positions of executive vp at EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV and Warner Chappell. He now has his own consulting firm, Clark Miller Consulting LLC, according to his LinkedIn profile.
