DOWNTOWN CATCHES A CURVE

Downtown Music Holdings is ringing in the new year with the acquisition of Curve Royalty Systems, a royalty-processing platform founded in 2019 by industry vets Tom Allen, Richard Leach and Ray Bush.

Curve serves more than 1,000 labels and publishers worldwide and processed nearly $1b in revenue in 2022. The company has pulled in $4b since its inception. Its client base includes Cooking Vinyl Group, Domino, Hospital Records/Songs in the Key of Knife, Epitaph, Warp, Ingrooves, Mad Decent and the MRC, to name but a few.

"Over the course of our discussions, it became apparent that we had a shared vision—Downtown provides real value to its customers and focuses on providing best-in-class products and services," Allen said. "That’s exactly what we’ve tried to achieve with Curve."

Per the press release, "Curve has the ability to ingest an unlimited number of income statements each month, collating complex information from a variety of different distributors and sources and distilling it into bespoke reports." We think that means it can help put a lot of cash in people's hands, though the word "ingest" always makes us hungry.

Casini Corporate Finance, with legal counsel from Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, repped Curve in the deal, while Downtown was advised by YMU Business Management with legal counsel from Osborne Clark.

Speaking of curves, we really need to get back to the gym—the word "ingest" isn't the only thing that always makes us hungry.