For the third time in a decade, the company now known as Anthem Entertainment, which owns royalties of Rush and Timbaland, among others, is up for sale, according to sources who also say the process may be delivering bids in the $500 million to $600 million range. Two earlier efforts, in 2017 and 2022, failed to get a bid high enough to satisfy the sellers (the Ontario Teachers Union pension fund is the majority owner). Will the third time be a charm?

For one, this time the deal is being shopped by powerhouse investment bank Goldman Sachs instead of RBC Capital, which oversaw the 2017 effort when the company was known as ole, the majorly indie; and Moelis & Co., which led the 2022 excursion into the music asset market. Related Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Bids to Buy UMG For Over $60 Billion Tory Lanez Sues California Prison System for $100M Over Stabbing by Inmate D4vd Arrested for Alleged Murder of Celeste Rivas, Months After Body Found in Singer's Car One of the things that hampered Anthem’s sale attempts in the past was that its catalog had been weighted with production music, which trades at lower multiples than traditional music publishing gets.

Nor does Compact Media, a TV, film and audio-visual secondary rights administration company it acquired in 2016, command traditional music publishing multiples. While Anthem still owns and operates London-based Compact Media as a subsidiary, in 2024 it struck a deal to unload three music production music portfolios, Jingle Punks, 5 Alarm Music and Cavendish Music — which had a combined 650,000 tracks — to Slipstream, a company founded by former members of ole. Terms of that deal were not disclosed.

The last time the company was up for sale, sources said that the management team was hoping to find an equity sponsor to replace the Ontario Teachers Union pension fund. It’s unclear if that’s the goal this time, or if strategic competitors can also bid on the company. Nevertheless, the elimination of the production music units likely makes Anthem more attractive to mainstream music publishers and/or music asset investors.

Sources suggest that Anthem Entertainment is generating somewhere in the range of $40 million to $50 million annually in net publisher’s share. That’s down from the $70 million in net publisher’s share that was reported in 2022, but that total also included the since sold production music pie of the pie. Besides buying the Rush publishing catalog and its master recording royalties in 2014, and Timbaland publishing catalogs in 2012 — and also doing a going-forward publishing deal with the latter — in 2013, ole acquired the Sony Pictures Entertainment publishing catalog for about $125 million.

Some sources suggest that deal turned into a lucrative asset for Anthem as it includes music from the Spider-Man and Men In Black franchises, among other blockbuster movies and hit TV shows. Along the way, ole transformed into Anthem Entertainment after it acquired that label — which had issued albums by Big Wreck, Team Party and Bob & Doug McKenzie, among others — in 2015. Both Anthem Entertainment and Goldman Sachs declined to comment for this story.