Downtown Music Holdings (Downtown℠), the world’s leading music services provider, announced today that it has established a fund to invest over $200 Million to support independent artists and entrepreneurial business owners. The fund, supported by a new credit facility with Bank of America, will be utilized across Downtown’s distribution, publishing administration and artist and label services operations.
“Empowering artists has been Downtown’s core mission from the very inception of the company,” said Andrew Bergman, CEO of Downtown Music Holdings. “This financing from Bank of America enables us to expand our music services business by giving creators and business owners the ability to finance projects in an environment where the options are often unpalatable.
Bank of America recognizes this need in our industry, and we applaud their commitment and belief in our mission.” Downtown Music Holdings’ Chief Investment Officer Alan Goodstadt commented: “We are immensely gratified that Bank of America shares our vision of building financial solutions for creators in our industry. This credit facility enables us to empower the thousands of artists who use our services.”
Downtown currently manages more than 23 million music assets on behalf of over 1 million artists and enterprise clients hailing from 145 countries from a catalog that spans 100 years of popular music. The company’s growth reflects the rise of independent artists overall, who now represent 31% of total streams on Spotify, according to MIDiA, and, based on an analysis conducted by former Spotify Chief Economist Will Page, out-released major labels during 2020 at a ratio of 8 to 1.
With over 70 million tracks spanning 5,000 genres in the world, not only is the quantity of music being released by independents dramatically increasing, but its quality is being noted at the highest levels—at the 2021 GRAMMY® Awards, 52% of all winners were independent artists.
“Downtown Music Holdings has built a company that is well positioned to serve the fast-growing independent sector of the music industry,” said Randy Hua, head of the Entertainment Industries Group at Bank of America. “Downtown’s new fund is a powerful resource, empowering music creators all over the world. Bank of America is pleased to help finance this innovative sector of the artistic economy.”