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Sony Music Publishing has acquired Recognition Music Group’s publishing and administration company Hipgnosis Songs Group, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The acquisition comes five years after Recognition Music Group — which used to be known as Hipgnosis Songs Fund until the company rebranded three months ago — purchased music publisher Big Deal Music in 2020, rebranding that company as Hipgnosis Songs Group shortly after. Hipgnosis Songs has stakes in hits like Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and “Bed Chem” among others. The publishing company is the only asset Sony acquired from Recognition.

Recognition Music was originally founded by music executive Merck Mercuriadis, with Mercuriadis leaving last year after private equity company Blackstone purchased the company. Recognition had been a major driver in the music acquisition boom of the past six years, with the company buying up catalogs from superstars like Justin Bieber, Neil Young, Mark Ronson, the Red...

Hollywood and music legends look to be pouring money into a fundraiser for New York Dolls singer and Saturday Night Live alum David Johansen, who is battling brain cancer.

Martin Scorsese, Colin Jost, Sony Music’s Rob Stringer, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, Hipgnosis Song Fund’s Merck Mercuriadis, the George Lopez Foundation and more notable names appear on a list of donations made to Johansen’s Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which provides financial assistance to artists struggling with health challenges.

“David is a legend but he’s also my very real very sick dad,” Johansen’s daughter, Leah Hennessy, shared in an Instagram Story on Monday. The statement came in partnership with the Johansen’s Sweet Relief page reveals he has been in treatment for stage 4 cancer “for most of the past decade.”

On the fund’s donations page, Scorsese (who directed the 2022 Johansen documentary Personality Crisis), the George Lopez Foundation,...

Mubi has acquired “Pavements,” Alex Ross Perry’s unconventional documentary-musical-biopic about cult ’90s slacker band Pavement, for multiple territories following its recent world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

The arthouse distributor, streamer and production company has picked up all rights to the film — soon to bow in both the New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival — for the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, France and Canada. Meanwhile, Mubi also acquired exclusive SVOD rights for the U.S.

The deal was signed with Utopia, which is handling world sales and, the day after the film’s Venice launch, announced it would also distribute theatrically in the U.S. Mubi says it will announce its release plans in the coming months.

Directed and written by Perry (“Her Smell”), “Pavements” stars Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, Nat Wolff, Fred Hechinger, Logan Miller, Griffin Newman, Tim Heidecker, Michael Esper, Zoe Lister-Jones and...

Utopia has picked up the U.S. rights to Pavements, director Alex Ross Perry’s musical portrait of the 1990s al-rock band a day after a world premiere in Venice earlier this week.

“One of our favorite filmmakers, one of our favorite bands, Pavements joining Utopia is simply a dream come true. The band’s iconic status has only continued to blossom out of the ’90s and Alex has crafted a film that transcends documentary and questions what the format can be in a surprising and novel way,” Utopia head of marketing and distribution Kyle Greenberg said in a statement on Friday.

Pavements will also have a North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. The musical biopic tracks the influential rock band as they prepare for a 2022 reunion tour in the prism of their earlier accomplishments.

“This multifaceted meta-movie is at once documentary, musical comedy, faux biopic and real museum exhibition.

Utopia has acquired U.S. rights to acclaimed director Alex Ross Perry’s “Pavements,” the day after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

The film debuted to strong reviews, with Variety saying “’Pavements’ dazzles as a spinning plates act,” and Screen describing it as “a joyous, slyly subversive celebration.”

A boundary-breaking look at the seminal band Pavement, the film is edited and produced by filmmaker Robert Greene and will have its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival later this fall.

An examination of the iconic 90s indie band, “Pavements” appears to be just another music documentary, until it doesn’t. A “prismatic, narrative, scripted, documentary, musical, metatextual hybrid,” the film intimately shows the band preparing for their sold-out 2022 reunion tour while simultaneously tracking the preparations for a musical based on their songs, a museum devoted to their history and a big-budget Hollywood biopic inspired by...

Barry Manilow and his management company Stiletto Entertainment filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against Hipgnosis Songs Fund on Friday, alleging that the company has refused to pay out multiple bonus payments tied to the original acquisition of his music rights from back in 2020.

Per the suit, filed in federal court in California this week and obtained by Rolling Stone, Hipgnosis originally paid $7.5 million for the artist royalty rights to the masters from Manilow’s catalog, including hits such as “Looks Like We Made It,” “Mandy,” “I Write The Songs,” and many more.

Merck Mercuriadis stated on Tuesday he will be stepping down as chairman of Hipgnosis Song Management, a company he founded.

His departure from HSM, the artist management firm, will coincide with the completion of a deal to acquire London-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd by Lyra Bidco Ltd., a company owned by Blackstone-managed funds.

The song rights powerhouse was founded in 2018 by Mercuriadis, a former music manager for Elton John, Beyoncé and Guns N’ Roses, among others. “Six years after founding HSM, I have decided that now is the right time for me to step back from my role as chairman. This is a timely opportunity for me to undertake a strategic shift of focus, and to spend more time advocating on behalf of songwriters to ensure that they are properly compensated for their work,” Mercuriadis said in a statement.

The former music manager and his company achieved growth by...

Justin Bieber has canceled his long-awaited Justice World Tour concerts in the US, Europe and Australia.

Bieber has remained silent on the cause of the third disruption to his world tour. He first postponed his performances in June 2022, one month into the tour, after being diagnosed with a rare facial paralysis called Ramsey-Hunt Syndrome. The Canadian singer resumed touring at the end of July, but after just six shows in Europe and one performance at Rock in Rio in Brazil, he alerted fans that he will take a break from touring in released a statement on Twitter, explaining that the performances “took a real toll on” him.

pic.twitter.com/qRY7ltRkV0

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) September 7, 2022

“After getting off stage, the exhaustion overtook me and I realized that I need to make my health the priority right now. So I’m going to take a break from touring for the time being.

The Recording Academy’s Special Merit Award ceremony arrived the Saturday afternoon ahead of the 65th annual Grammy Awards. Members of Nirvana, the Supremes, and Heart, along with Woodstock photographer Henry Diltz, Auto-Tune inventor Dr. Andy Hildebrand and more, received honors at the intimate gathering inside Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to artists who “have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording,” according to the Academy.

As the two-hour event rolled into the evening, with tear-shedding speeches and surprise a capella numbers,...

Phil Collins and Genesis have reached a deal with Concord to sell their publishing and master recordings for a figure north of 300 million, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The deal includes songs that Collins recorded in his solo career and the music he made in Genesis along with keyboardist Tony Banks and guitarist Mike Rutherford. It also includes solo recordings from Rutherford and Banks but nothing from Peter Gabriel’s time in Genesis or his solo career.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Concord...

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London-based Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd. said Thursday that revenue for its fiscal year ended March 31 jumped 24.7 percent, “partly due to the catalogue acquisitions during the period.”

The song rights powerhouse, founded in 2018 by Merck Mercuriadis, a former music manager for the likes of Elton John, Beyoncé and Guns N’ Roses, reported annual revenue of 200.4 million, compared with 160.7 million in the previous year.

One key profitability metric, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, rose 21.8 percent to 129.9 million. But amid higher costs, the company, whose stock is listed in London, swung to a fiscal-year operating loss of 16.7 million, compared with a profit of 44.5 million in the previous fiscal year. Royalty costs for the year rose to 32 million from 22.5 million, the firm said.

Hipgnosis on Thursday also highlighted that its portfolio now includes 146 catalogs with 65,413 songs with an aggregate value of 2.69 billion. It acquired eight...

Indie singer Morrissey has parted ways with his manager Merck Mercuriadis. Mercuriadis started working with the former Smiths frontman five years ago, but has split from the musician by mutual consent. Speaking about the decision, Mercuriadis said: "Over the last five years, Morrissey and I have had three albums which entered the charts at five, two and one, and had (more)...

Axl Rose has hired music mogul Irving Azoff and fellow svengali Andy Gould as Guns N' Roses' new management team.

The rock supergroup has been without a manager since Rose publicly fell out with longtime handler Merck Mercuriadis in 2006, but, as he prepares to release the long-awaited Chinese Democracy album, it appears the powerful frontman wants heavyweights behind him.

Azoff has long been associated with the Eagles and the former McA executive has also managed the careers of Christina Aguilera and Van Halen.

Gould previously worked for top talent agency The Firm.