France-based distributor Believe has entered the publishing market with the acquisition of U.K.-based pubco Sentric. The buy is the first step in building a global publishing business. Based in Liverpool, Sentric has offices in Europe and the U.S.

By partnering with more than 70 collecting societies, the platform already operates at scale in over 200 territories, representing more than 4 million songs and over 400k songwriters, either directly or via industry partners.

Believe is the second acquisitor of Sentric in just over a year: Utopia bought the company in February 2022. The transaction sees Believe acquire full ownership of Sentric from Utopia. It values Sentric at €47m on a 100% basis. The new business line that will be created at Believe will be led by Sentric's current leadership team.

“The growth and digital transformation of the songwriters’ market is opening up many opportunities,” said Denis Ladegaillerie, founder & CEO of Believe. “We are excited to be able to immediately expand the services we provide to our TuneCore clients with Sentric’s best-in-class royalty-collection service while starting to work on future innovative products and services for all of Believe’s songwriters and publishers.”